Kunoichi
by OhThatsWanky
Summary: Britt is a shinobi, a perfect killer, trained to feel nothing and let nothing get in her way. But when a job goes wrong and propels Santana Lopez into her path, all of the training in the world can't stop the collision between the darkness of the only life Britt's ever known and a life in the light with Santana. AU!Brittana.
1. One

**Author's Note:** You probably don't want to read this if you're a fan of Finn.

* * *

The truth is never taken  
From another.  
One carries it always  
By oneself.  
_Katsu!_  
—Tetto Giko

He was the spoiled scion of an American Senator: rich, connected, powerful — but too stupid to know the danger of insulting an oyabun's son in public.

For this, he would die.

The Sumiyoshi-kai dispatched a little brother to Master Kazuo's dojo. He stood stiffly in the center of the floor, a ball of tension as out of place in the stillness of the dojo as a fifth leg on a horse. Master Kazuo sat crosslegged on the floor, and in the corner knelt his most trusted shinobi, the rarest of rarities: a kunoichi and a gaikokujin.

Woman. Foreigner. The labels mattered little to her as she knelt on the floor with her arms outstretched before her, supporting the weight of a bō staff across her wrists. The little brother's arrival had interrupted her practice session, much to her annoyance, but it also presented opportunity.

The little brother's eyes flicked over her with fear disguised as disdain. He couldn't have been older than sixteen.

Master Kazuo read the offer and grunted. "It will be done."

"By her?" The little brother's tone skirted near the edge of impoliteness.

"Do not trouble yourself with the details. We will complete your task in the way we see fit."

Master Kazuo dismissed the little brother with a nod, and stillness returned to the room. "Brittany?"

The muscles in Britt's arms and shoulders burned hot with the weight of the staff, but she willed herself motionless by pushing the pain into the endless empty void where nothing lives. "Yes, master?"

"Prepare yourself. And be careful, there's more to this that it seems."

* * *

The target lived in a compound in the Roppongi district. Britt watched him for weeks, studying his habits and his interactions with others. She quickly tired of his casual racism and his inflated sense of entitlement.

Unsurprisingly, he rarely strayed far from the nightclubs and restaurants popular with foreigners. It made him easy to track, and Roppongi was the one place in all of Tokyo where Britt didn't have to work to blend in. It was as simple as wearing the face of just another gaijin tourist looking for a good time.

On the day of the job, she reviewed the plan and triple-checked all of her equipment. She spent an hour practicing blade katas and another hour meditating in the garden outside the dojo. And as she dressed in loose fitting black trousers and shirt, she sent a prayer to Inari asking that her blades be silent and swift.

She watched the compound until the target and his girlfriend returned home. Everything was in place, and she slipped the black hooded mask over her head. She would make no mistakes.

It was trivial to bypass the security around the compound and scale the outer wall. The target's girlfriend was another American, a singer named Rachel Berry, and whenever she was in town, his evening routine became a lot less playboy and a lot more mundane. The bedroom light switched on at 10pm, right on schedule. She would have three minutes to enter before the target returned to the bedroom and seven minutes after that to finish the job before the girlfriend came back to join him.

Britt flexed her fingers around her climbing spikes and leaped up the wall. The rough stone was an easy climb, and she set the bypass into the window track and used a pick to pop the lock. Then she was in.

The target was right on time, and he barely had a chance to close the door and turn around before Britt was moving to meet him from behind, her blade flashing white metal as she cut a smile into his throat from ear to ear. His last breath ended in a sad, wet wheeze, and a pungent smell filled the room. It was always this way with Death.

Then the bedroom door opened unexpectedly, and a black-haired woman stepped into the room. "Finn—"

The woman was too far away for a knife strike, but Britt was well prepared. Her fingers found the metsubushi hidden inside her sleeve, poised to deliver the blinding package of metal shavings directly into the woman's eyes, but her mind played an interrupt — _black hair_ — and her hand stopped. This was not Rachel Berry.

Time lengthened like the weft on an endless loom. The woman's eyes widened with fear and her mouth gaped like a koi, preparing to shout, or scream, and Britt was on her in an instant, knocking her out with a single blow from the heel of her blade.

Britt memorized the woman's face: the high cheekbones, the full lips, the dark eyes framed by perfect eyebrows. She was beautiful, and innocent, and in the wrong place at the very worst time and because of that Britt was expected to kill her.

Feelings were Death. They were for normal people. They were supposed to keep pain company in the endless void so Britt could be the perfect killer, but as she studied the woman's face, she felt something splinter inside, and instead of using her blade to end yet another life, she reached out and touched a fingertip to the woman's cheek.

She was the first person Britt had touched without killing in years.

* * *

Britt knelt on the wooden floor of the dojo.

"Master Kazuo, I have failed." She brushed her robe aside, exposing the hilt of her katana. "I did not kill the witness. My only wish is to die."

His hand stopped her before she could pull the blade. "Child, do you think me a fool?"

"No, master."

"I'll not waste your talents for the sake of some worthless American."

The assassination of the Senator's son was the top news across Japan within hours, and before the sun had finished rising, Britt's contacts within the Metropolitan Police delivered all she needed to know about the mystery woman.

Inspector Yoshida: "Did you see the assailant?"  
Ms. Santana Lopez (translated): "Yes."  
Yoshida: "Can you describe them for me, please?"  
Ms. Lopez: "No."  
Yoshida: "No?"  
Ms. Lopez: "They knocked me out before I could get a good look."

Santana Lopez had seen her, of that Britt had no doubt, and likely well enough to know that she was a woman and a gaijin. But Santana had lied to the police. Why?

Britt would have to find out.


	2. Two

Had I not known  
that I was dead  
already  
I would have mourned  
my loss of life.  
—Ota Dokan (1432-1486)

The assassination of the Senator's son shook the governments of two world powers and put every intelligence agency with interests on the Pacific Rim at high alert. And somewhere in the chaos, Santana Lopez had been spirited away under a cloak of disinformation as two governments struggled to shape the narrative, her only trace in the news media a vague reference as "a friend of Mr. Hudson's."

Britt started her search with what she knew. She had a name, thanks to the report leaked from the Metropolitan Police, and the hundreds of internet cafes within the city made it possible to link that name to a specific person out of the thousands of women who no doubt shared it.

She chose one of the busier cafes near Shibuya Crossing early in the afternoon, paying cash for an hour of access before the place filled up with cyber drifters scratching out places to sleep in coffin sized booths for twenty USD a day. She slipped past the coffee machines and the bookshelves stuffed with manga to an unoccupied booth and pulled a flash drive out of one pocket and a pair of nitrile gloves out the other. The fluorescent lights overhead washed every surface in sickly light. She donned the gloves as the computer churned through its boot-up process, and as soon as it finished, stuck the drive into an open USB port.

There is no such thing as anonymity on the Internet, but Britt's flash drive contained a few precautions that were about as close as one could get without being part of a government intelligence agency. She started a Tor proxy using software she kept on the flash drive along with a copy of Firefox configured to her specific requirements. The internet traffic from this computer would flow out from this nondescript cafe in a random part of Shibuya and bounce through thousands of encrypted connections around the world. A needle in a digital haystack.

As expected, a search for Santana Lopez generated thousands of results, and Britt systematically moved through the list, ruling out Santana Lopezes in Texas, New Mexico, New York, life after life, all of them wearing the wrong face, until she clicked on a link that took her to a faculty profile page at the University of California, Irvine and stared at a photograph of a woman whose features matched the ones stamped into her memory. Black hair. Dark, searching eyes.

She scanned the bio. Santana Lopez was a writer. A teacher. Someone whose life's work was to observe and transform and create. The thought made her chest tighten. She didn't know why knowing this mattered. It never mattered before.

It wasn't difficult to pull up a list of universities in Tokyo, or to narrow the list down to the handful that had programs in English literature or writing, or to find an event calendar for each until she had the reason for Santana's visit and a date with a lecture hall at the University of Tokyo in two day's time. She stretched her shoulders, felt cramped muscles loosen. She closed her browser session and removed the flash drive and the gloves.

She exited the cafe into bright sunlight, and for an instant everything was tilted and out of sorts until she blinked the feeling away and merged into the crowd, letting it sweep her down the street in its embrace until it dissolved into the chaos of Shibuya Crossing. The last thing she saw as she descended into the subway was the statue of Hachikō.

Hachikō, the loyal dog.

* * *

Britt didn't attend the lecture. Instead, she found a convenient niche in the hallway outside with an excellent view of the hall doors. She waited, leafing through a copy of the Nikkei Business Daily until the doors opened and the lecture hall disgorged the audience into the campus atmosphere. Her eyes watched for patterns. Which path did the students take to leave the building? The faculty? When the flow of people leaving the hall began to slow to a trickle, she stood up, folded the newspaper and tucked it under her arm, and fell in behind a group of professors as they walked to the foyer of the building.

The foyer's second floor was a fine place to observe. She sat on a low maplewood bench and unfurled the newspaper. Halfway through an article on corporate tax payments she heard the unmistakable sound of American English clashing against the rat-a-tat of excited Japanese.

The group came into view: Santana and a native guide, probably someone on the faculty, surrounded by a small crowd of young women. Students. The guide was doing an admirable job of translating the rapid-fire speech of youth into something more comprehensible. Santana smiled graciously and answered every question. Her teeth were perfect and white. Her answers were thoughtful and displayed the easy confidence of someone very good at their work. Soon the students were bowing as a group — _Thank you, Lopez-sensei, thank you._ — before they dispersed and the guide was bowing low for the honored guest and apologizing for all the questions, apologizing for keeping Lopez-sensei from her very important business.

Then the guide departed, leaving Santana to exit the building alone. Britt tossed the paper into a trash bin and took the stairs two at a time down to the ground floor, pushed the doors open into the hazy sunshine of the late afternoon, and Santana was as easy to spot as a burning beacon against a monotonous background. Britt followed at a distance as Santana converged with crowds of students heading for the main gate. The gate spilled out on to Hongō-dōri Avenue, and Santana followed the crowd of people crossing the street on their way to Kasuga Station.

Navigating a crowd was all about looking: looking at everyone's feet to gauge their speed and direction; looking like you had a purpose and a place to go. Britt adjusted her pace and glided through the throng with such ease that no one thought twice about the gaijin in their midst. She shadowed Santana on the same side of the street, about 10 meters behind. A mass of salarymen poured into the street from a boxy set of office buildings, and Britt closed the distance to 5 meters, close enough to see the sunlight reflect off the flowing waves of Santana's black hair, the glint of a silver necklace around her neck, the fuzz stuck to the waxed canvas messenger bag slung over her shoulder.

Santana walked a brisk pace and her gaze rarely strayed from the direction she was going. She was familiar with this route, then, and likely on the way to the place where she was staying while in country. Britt kept up the pace, sticking to Santana's blind spots, her muscles supple and relaxed with the chase.

At a T intersection up ahead, Santana rounded the corner to the right and Britt crossed to the left side of the street. To her right was a high wall of a dwelling, overhung with the limbs of trees in a garden, an oasis of green almost out of place in this urban neighborhood, and one likely belonging to a ryokan.

Britt turned the corner wide and Santana was nowhere to be seen. She kept walking up the street, and the neatly painted sign reading "vacancy" next to the entrance gate confirmed her hunch.

Now she knew where Santana was staying.

* * *

On Saturday afternoon, Britt took the Keiō rail line from the green hills of Hachiōji to Shinjuku and the subway from there to Kasuga Station, a five minute walk from the ryokan.

Two large bronze rings hung from the front gate, and Britt hefted the weight and knocked twice, waiting until the doors swung open on ancient hinges. The innkeeper was an elderly woman, wrinkled like a dried lychee, and the heavy lids of her eyes widened as she took in the sight of a young foreign woman on her doorstep.

Britt put on her most winning smile and adopted the affectation where the lights were on but no one was in the onsen. It was as familiar as her favorite blade, this persona of the clueless American girl, fresh off the plane and _Gee, wouldya look at that?_ People always saw what they expected to see, and the innkeeper was no different as her face blanked and she braced herself for the inevitable barrage of English, a language she didn't know.

Britt bowed deeply and stammered in her most painfully halting Japanese. "Grandmother, is Santana Lopez-san here?"

The innkeeper's wide face softened as she took pity on the polite foreign girl who hardly knew up from down. "She stepped out, but she should be back in time for dinner."

"May I wait for her here, Grandmother? She is my friend and I must see her urgently."

"Of course. Would you like to wait for her here or in the garden?"

Britt allowed hope to flicker across her eyes. "Grandmother, I was hoping to prepare some tea for my friend. I'm sure she won't mind."

The innkeeper smiled with delight at the girl's impressive display of politeness. "I'm glad Lopez-sama has such a good friend. She has been by herself this whole week." She gestured _Come in, come in_ and Britt followed as she shuffled through the narrow halls of the inn. She reached a room in the corner on the garden side of the building and slid the door open. "I'll send the tea service as soon as Lopez-sama arrives."

Britt bowed even deeper than before. "Thank you, Grandmother," and she turned and walked into Santana's room.

Rice-colored sunlight filtered through the paper shōji that closed the room from the garden. The room was empty except for the mats covering the floor and a low table made of cherry wood in the center of the open space. Britt circled around the table, knelt facing the main doorway, and waited.

She closed her eyes and focused on the breath. This was different than the punishing pain of a heavy wooden pole across outstretched arms in a dojo, where the breath would push the pain into the place that left nothing but the hard edges of clarity. Here, in the space of an empty room, all she had were her thoughts and the slow thump of her heart and her breath _in_ and _out_.

Britt opened her eyes at the sound of footsteps in the hall. The door slid open and closed, and Santana turned and froze as soon as she realized she wasn't alone. But then she did something unexpected: the fear in her eyes subsided, and she crossed the room, slowly, until she stood facing Britt across the table, and she knelt in the stiff way that foreigners did, and her dark eyes searched Britt's features as if she were a book in a language that made no sense.

Britt's mouth felt like the inside of a silkworm cocoon. She was used to being looked at with the fear of prey, or the challenge of another predator, or the indifference of a society that never truly accepted anything outside the norm, and being appraised with such studied curiosity was disconcerting. Everything she had planned to say dried up like seaweed in the sun. "Your innkeeper is very trusting," she said, knowing that as an explanation it was entirely inadequate.

Santana's eyes didn't waver. "You found me. I knew you would." Her voice was smoky and as limber as a yumi bow. "Just make it quick, OK?" She was so very calm.

"You think I'm here to kill you."

Her brows furrowed. "Why else would you be here?"

"Why did you lie to the police?" _If I wanted to kill you, you never would have seen it coming._

"Why did you kill Finn?"

"Your friend—"

"He wasn't a friend." Her voice turned from smoke to ice. "I wasn't surprised that he'd gotten himself into trouble. He always had a big mouth."

"That... would be an accurate explanation of the situation."

Santana rocked back on her heels and let out a humorless snort. "And once again, he caught me up in his bullcrap, but I'm guessing there's way more on the line than his father's Senate race this time."

Britt said nothing. When faced with confusing statements, it was often best to remain silent.

Santana watched Britt for a long time, and when she finally spoke again, her tone was soft and wondering. "You didn't kill me."

"No."

"But you probably should have."

"Yes."

She didn't look surprised at all. "Looks like we're both in trouble."

"I can handle trouble."

"And I can't. I have no idea what's going on, but I know that much."

Then Britt found herself saying, "I won't let anyone harm you," and she had no idea why she'd said it. Six incredibly dangerous words, and they'd slipped out so easily, like entrails through a slice in the belly.

Santana tilted her head as if making up her mind. "I lied because you could have killed me but you didn't. And I wanted to know why. So, why?"

"I don't know." This conversation was making Britt feel many things she didn't know.

They stared at each other, saying nothing as time stretched past awkwardness, until Santana said, "I trust you," and she looked like she'd figured out a puzzle.

Trust was precious, infinitely valuable, and normal people threw it around without a second thought. Anywhere else, anybody else, and Britt would have dismissed the offer as another meaningless gesture. But here and now, the thought of Santana's trust worried at the splinter inside her.

"You owe me for that concussion you gave me, by the way."

Britt felt her ears redden with embarrassment. "I don't possess anything you would want," she blurted. The loss of control she felt around Santana was shocking.

Santana smirked. "I'm sure you'll think of something."

And the splinter inside Britt shifted again.


	3. Three

Throughout the frosty night  
I lay awake. When morning bells  
rang out, my heart grew clear—  
upon this fleeting dream-world  
dawn is waking.  
— Hasegawa Shume (c. 1700)

Britt did not like the disarray that settled inside her thoughts after her visit with Santana. She had said to Santana that she would protect her, and she had accepted Santana's trust, but she had no reason to explain either of these actions, nor could she explain why her mind chose random occasions to replay flashes of silver against black hair or eyes that held no fear.

She was not a monk. She did not have the luxury of kneeling for hours in zazen, letting her thoughts pass through her mind like wind against grains of sand, holding the stubborn ones up like a burning coal, regarding them from a distance until they burned themselves out.

She preferred the solace that came with action.

.x.

She stood in the center of the dojo with her eyes closed and let its peaceful quiet soak into her skin and down into her bones. The tatami mats that covered the wooden floor felt rough against the soles of her feet and she felt the floor bounce as it flexed under her weight. She turned inwards, felt the squeeze of her heart within her chest and her breath as it pooled inside her belly. She inhaled. Exhaled. And her heart began to pound out a great steady beat and qi flowed up into her lungs and out into her limbs, propelled by every breath. It was only then that she reached her arms up high and held it. Lowered her arms, loosening her joints. Reached again, higher than before. Held and lowered and repeated until the muscles in her shoulders relaxed and grew warm. She moved through her stretching routine until her body felt loose and supple and every intake of breath brought stillness and every exhale promised power.

In the Gōjū-ryū school of karate, Sanchin was the kata of basics, the root from which all the other katas grew. It was a moving meditation and a slow dance between the mind, body, and will. So important was the Sanchin that Master Kazuo had refused to allow her to study it until she had trained for two years, and she still remembered the bruises from his corrections to her form.

She moved into the opening stance and kept breathing in the same steady rhythm. Her weight shifted to the balls of her feet, which centered her gravity, and she imagined thick roots roping around the bones of her thighs, down her legs, and into the floor, pinning her in place like a Sugi tree that guarded the path to a temple. Once rooted, she began the opening patterns of the arms, and then into the shifting stances of the legs, and her moves were slow and deliberate, silk-smooth with the precision of thousands upon thousands of repetitions and she performed them without the need to consciously think, just _be_, floating in the focused tension of her mind and body until they circled into a unified One. She did not think of Santana.

She flowed into the Tensho, or Turning Palms, the Sanchin's softer counterpart. The Tensho was a balancing act between the dynamic tension of her core and the flowing movements of her hands. She was two things at once, tense and relaxed, hard and soft, the two sides bound together by the breath, always the breath. Then she shifted into the Gekisai, or Smashing Attack, a kata so basic it could be taught to schoolchildren but so difficult it took years to master the gathering of the qi and the breath in order to unleash it with devastating power. She kept moving, constantly moving, now into the open handed forms. The powerful, straight line strikes of the Shisōchin, or Four Direction Attack. The spiritual Seipai and Sanseirū, the 18 and 36 Steps, culminating in the most advanced of them all, the Supārinpei, or 108 Steps.

The door to the dojo opened somewhere around the sixtieth step, and she did not need to interrupt herself to know that Master Kazuo had entered. He stood silently at the back of the room and she felt his eyes on her as she worked her way through the rest of the forms and came to rest with a final exhalation of breath. Then she turned to face him and bowed, deeply, before turning back to bow to the space of the dojo itself.

"Very good," he said, "But eighty-six was a bit rushed."

Britt nodded her head. "Yes, Master. I will work on that."

He stepped onto the mat and held out a hand. It was not a welcome.

Britt instantly assumed a fighting stance, dropping lower than when she was practicing her katas. She was four inches taller than he was and had the advantage of reach, but the disadvantage of a higher center of gravity. They circled each other warily, until his hand shot out in an open knife strike, quick as a cat. She turned it aside with a forearm and moved in for a counter punch, but he twisted out of the way at the very last moment and left her swinging at empty air.

Master Kazuo was fifteen when Allied bombers obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki along with one hundred thousand civilians, and sixteen when the sun set on the Emperor's divinity, but he was still as fast and as strong as a much younger man, and his vast experience gave him enough tricks that Britt always had to be at her best when she faced him.

They sparred in earnest now, in flurries of movement followed by quiet periods of testing the other's defenses. They traded blows, holding back the power to prevent injury, but leaving enough of a sting to motivate avoidance. Britt moved deliberately and breathed in great long bursts, let it fuel her in their dance around the floor of the dojo.

He snapped a palm strike at her face, a blow meant to shift her off balance more than anything else, and she twisted aside and dipped her stance even lower, the muscles in her thighs as strong as the keel of a ship. Keeping her balance in this way came at the cost of some of her mobility, and Kazuo's own stance changed, shifting away from karate and into jujutsu. He would try for a throw or a submission hold. Unless she could get to him first.

She intercepted him as he stepped inside, using her extra reach to grab hold of the collar of his gi, and before he could counter, she added an extra twist, slipping the hand around his neck and pulling the cloth up into a stranglehold that brought him to his knees. She pressed forward, trying to press him down into a hold, but then she felt herself turning over as he twisted her into a reverse that left her feet searching for purchase on the mat and her back arched as tight as a bow. After a few seconds, he released her, and she rolled backwards up on to her feet. They faced each other and bowed.

"Do you know what you did wrong there?" he asked her.

"I dropped my left shoulder." A tiny mistake, but one exploitable by a master.

"Yes." He gave her a look of appraisal. "However, that was a very creative move. Well done."

She nodded, and allowed herself one second to feel pleased.

But she had to be better.

.x.

Britt did not think of Santana during the hours she spent practicing, but she did almost every other moment she was awake. So she practiced more, until her limbs felt like stone weights and she dragged herself into her futon at night and even Master Kazuo, whose heart warmed only at the sight of a student hard at work, began to look at her oddly.

As she swept the cobblestone yard in front of the dojo on the morning of the fourth day after her visit with Santana, she caught herself in a daydream, wondering what Santana would look like if she were to smile a genuine smile in Britt's general direction. It was the last straw. She finished sweeping in double time, put away the broom, then took her slippers off and stepped into the small living space that adjoined the rear of the dojo.

The room was rectangular and not very large, only six tatami mats in size, though it could be partitioned into two separate rooms by a sliding shoji. This space served every purpose, holding their futons as they slept at night, until the bedding was stored away in the morning and replaced with a low table and cushions during the daytime. She and Master Kazuo had lived like this for so long now that they were long past the awkwardness of their disparate genders. She was as good as a son, and she always had been, ever since he took her in as an orphan when she was three years old.

Master Kazuo was out on some errand or another, and only her futon remained on the floor in the room. She folded up her blanket and pillow, then the cotton-stuffed futon itself, and placed the entire bundle in the wooden oshiire that held all the bedding for storage. Next to the oshiire sat two intricately carved wooden tansu chests, which held their personal effects and clothing. She changed out of her everyday workclothes and into civilian wear: a light and airy scoopneck pullover over a tanktop, form-fitting black jeans, and sneakers. Just fashionable enough to blend in.

The dojo was tucked in a small valley within the mountains west of the city of Hachiōji. She took the bus down to the city center and got off at a stop that put her within walking distance of the public library. The library had public computer terminals, she had her flash drive, and in fifteen minutes she pulled a copy of Santana Lopez's lecture and speaking schedule for the next two months out of a printer tray. A vague feeling, almost a flutter, shot through her chest as she held the still-warm paper in her hands.

She wouldn't be able to make it to Bunkyō in time for today's lecture, but if she hurried, she could probably catch Santana as she left the lecture hall. She had no intention of actually speaking with Santana. Watching her from a distance would be enough.

.x.

An hour and a half later, she sat in the shadows of an arcade of columns that graced the building across the way from the one that housed the Department of English. At ten til the hour, a great number of students began to pour out into the concourse, and her mind went to work filtering out the uninteresting, watching patterns form and shift, looking for flashes of the distinct against a backdrop of uniformity. At the hour, the crowds dispersed into a trickle as the transition period between classes ended. At five past the hour, an unfamiliar feeling, that of disappointment, pasted itself against the back of her mind, and the thought occurred to her that this entire trip may have been a foolish idea. At ten past the hour, she was about to stand up and leave when the doors to the building opened and Santana stepped into the sunlight. Britt's heart began to pound as if she'd skipped right to the third act of a play.

Santana was wearing a crisp dress shirt, dark pinstriped slacks, and heels. No suit jacket. Her hair cascaded in loose black waves over her shoulders. She seemed like one of those women who could roll out of bed and be instantly put together. The same messenger bag from before was slung over her shoulder instead of a purse, and it hung heavily, laden with cargo. Books, Britt guessed, and she wondered what kind of books Santana read when she wasn't working.

The concourse was empty enough to make getting any closer a difficult proposition, so Britt remained in her spot within the shadows. She watched Santana check for messages on her cell phone, and then the phone suddenly rang, the sound harsh and shrill. Britt was too far away to hear what was being said, but she could see Santana's eyes as they narrowed and her body language as it tensed. She was clearly not enjoying the conversation, but she didn't hang up or raise her voice. Instead, she seemed stuck, and Britt watched, fascinated, as a parade of emotions scrolled across Santana's face over the course of the conversation, until she hung up the phone with a sigh and stowed it away in her bag.

Then Santana looked up abruptly, as if she sensed she was being watched. She looked around in a wide circle, and Britt had to fight the urge to duck, to shrink back, which would have been a very good way to blow her cover. She'd known how to stay in cover since she was five years old, playing hide-and-seek in the woods behind the dojo, learning how to conceal herself in the shadows, how to keep every muscle still except for her eyes and remain that way for hours, how to imitate the motion of the things around her and present that which people expected to see. It was a constant, an instinct, and the fact that she'd had such an impulse was a serious concern. She could not make such mistakes.

After a long moment of searching, Santana sighed and started walking toward Hongō-dōri Avenue. Britt let her go, choosing to stay in the shadows with her troubled thoughts.

.x.

She did the Sanchin ten times in a row, fifty times, a hundred times, until Master Kazuo came in and told her to stop, and that she was forbidden from the dojo for the next two days.

.x.

The lecture hall's balcony was not a particularly good place to view the podium, and the acoustics in the far reaches were spotty, but she could hear Santana's strong, lively, voice discuss the nature of fiction versus creative nonfiction and for now it was enough just to listen and let the words roll over her and through her.

"The truth is not an absolute. We filter it through the prism of our experiences, and we're left with two options: the less true, and — if we're lucky — the more true. But sometimes those two collapse into each other and then we don't know what we have."

She paused, thoughtful. "But I'll tell you what we do have. We have our memory. And we have words. Neither of which are particularly accurate. But that's why I find written language so fascinating. And that's why, when you write, when you make your own truth, in whatever percentage of less and more that suits you, it's an opportunity for you to give the reader their money's worth. Were your readers moved? Did you make them feel something? Because if you did, then what you wrote was a success."

It was only after Santana had stopped speaking that Britt realized she had been holding her breath.

Watching Santana from a distance was no longer enough.

.x.

Britt followed Santana back to the ryokan, but only as far as the apartment building across the street. It was part of a cluster of the tallest buildings in the immediate vicinity, three stories high, with a flat, open roof, a convenient drainpipe in the alleyway behind it, and a building next door that would provide her with cover for a daylight climb. She gave the pipe an experimental shake. The worker who had attached it to the side of the building had done an adequate job, and its fittings were secure enough for her to climb with confidence. She gripped the pipe in her strong fingers and used it to steady herself, and the sticky soles of her shoes gave her enough purchase to propel herself up to the roof.

She rolled herself over the safety wall that ringed the roof and looked around, pleased to find it mostly empty except for a few odd mechanical bits. The rust-capped hinges and dusty streaks on the access door implied that this area was little used, especially now that spring was edging into summer and the heat of the sun would bake the poured asphalt surface of the roof for most of the day. But this would not be a problem for her because it was late in the afternoon on one of those humid overcast days, the kind that was merely hot instead of unbearable, and the sun shone weakly as if Amaterasu had moved far, far away.

The opposite edge of the rooftop overlooked the ryokan and provided a clear view of most of the garden. She crab-walked forward until she could peer over the edge, and replayed her mental map of what she had seen of the ryokan's interior layout. Santana's room was the third from the right, opening into the garden, but the view was obscured by the branches of the large black pine that dominated the back corner.

Still, it wasn't a bad observation spot. She turned around with her back against the wall and fished a small mirror about the size of a 100 Yen piece out of her pocket, held it so she'd be able to catch movement that occurred down below, and settled in to watch and wait.

Sometime later, the mirror flickered and roused her from the half-meditative state she'd sunk into as if she was following the setting sun. A cool breeze had blown the haze away and the sky was the color of cherry blossoms.

The harsh noise of people drifted up from below as a large group exited the ryokan, dressed in evening finery and flush with the energy of a prospective Friday night on the town. The mirror was far too small to make out individuals, and she didn't want to risk popping her head over the wall. Instead, she closed her eyes and concentrated on their voices, picking out the sound of mostly Japanese. Native speakers. It was unlikely that Santana would be a part of this group, and once they'd wandered far enough away up the street she poked her head out and confirmed it.

In the ryokan, a light came on in Santana's room, followed shortly by the hollow-sounding snick of a shōji being opened. Britt peered over the wall. Santana stood, highlighted by the light behind her, framed between the twisted branches of the black pine, and Britt suddenly had to get off the roof, had to get down. She crouched down into the four-point stance of kitsune-bashiri and scrambled across the roof, silent and swift like a fox, and she hoisted herself over the railing and used the drainpipe to guide her descent, not even bothering with the last eight feet as she dropped into a landing. Then she was moving again, and the wall around the garden posed little obstacle to a running start, and she reached for the top edge of the wall as her feet kicked against it, once, twice, and then she swung her legs over and dropped down on the other side, landing in a crouch.

Santana looked at her with surprise crossed with amusement. Britt stood and leapt from rock to rock around the pond that formed the heart of the garden, careful not to disturb any of the plants placed with artful precision across the grounds, until she stood an arm's distance away from Santana.

Santana raised an eyebrow and said, "This place has a front door, you know." She sounded like she was holding back a laugh.

"This method was more expedient."

"I bet."

Now that Britt was here, it occurred to her that she hadn't thought of what she would do once she got to this point. That strange flutter was back, its soft wings brushing against her ribs. Even if she had something to say, her tongue felt too heavy to speak.

Santana broke the silence. "Would you like to sit down?" she said, not even stopping to wait for an answer before she sat down cross-legged on the wide threshold that separated the interior of the building from the garden outside.

Britt removed her shoes before she stepped onto the wooden threshold and knelt facing Santana. "I was wondering why you didn't leave for the evening like that other group."

"The group that just left? Oh, they're fun. But I wanted some time to myself."

Time that Britt's unexpected appearance was rudely interrupting. Her cheeks flushed at the realization. "I'm sorry," she stammered. "I should go."

Santana smiled. "No. Don't do that."

Britt's daydream had been wrong. It was even better than she had guessed, the way Santana squinted as she smiled and how it made tiny creases at the corners of her eyes, the way the shadows highlighted the dimples in her cheeks. The flutter inside her grew, insistent like the beating of wings, and her hands buzzed.

The smile faded. "You're shaking."

Britt looked down at her hands and found that she was.

Santana shifted in place. "I'm sorry, I don't quite know what to do with you," she said. "I mean, I know you can do some very bad things. I know that. But here I am sitting next to you and you're doing that and I don't know what it means." But then she leaned forward and reached out with her left hand, stopping before she made contact. "May I?"

All Britt could do was nod.

Santana slid closer, so close that their knees almost touched, and she reached forward and took Britt's hand in her own. She explored gently and carefully, brushing her thumb over unfamiliar skin and running it across the thick callouses at the base of Britt's fingers. Britt closed her fingers reflexively, but Santana pried them back open, murmuring, "So strong," and then, "It's okay," as Britt closed her eyes and tilted her head back.

The touch of Santana's skin felt different from that first time, that night in Roppongi when she had killed a man and touched Santana's cheek and felt something break inside herself. Santana felt _alive_, and red blood beat so vibrantly within her heart that Britt could feel it through the places that their skin touched. It left her stunned by the loss of something she had never known existed. A want, great and terrifying. She had never wanted before, not like this.

Santana's fingers stilled but she didn't let go of Britt's hand. "That's the first time you've ever been touched like that, isn't it?" Her voice was quiet, and it wasn't really a question.

Britt took a breath and opened her eyes, expecting to see pity. Instead, she saw her reflection within a pool of clarity. Santana's eyes held a look of understanding, vast and ancient.

"Do you know the story of Amaterasu and the mirror?" Britt asked once she found her voice.

Santana shook her head.

"Amaterasu is the goddess of the universe and of the sun. Her brother, Susano-o, was a troublemaker, and there came a time when his mischief caused his sister great offense, so she descended into a cave and hid her light away from all of creation. The other gods and goddesses tried to coax her out of the cave, but she refused, and the world remained in darkness.

"One day, Uzume, the spirit of merriment, brought forth a great mirror and fixed it to a tree facing the entrance to the cave. And then she began to dance, wreathed in flowers and leaves, her feet drumming a rhythm into the earth. She danced, and danced, until she cast the flowers aside and danced naked, and all the gods roared in approval. The sound of their laughter made Amaterasu curious, so she peeked out of the cave, and a ray of light escaped, and she was dazzled with the vision of a beautiful goddess."

"Her reflection."

Britt nodded. "Yes. And Amaterasu's depression crumbled in the face of such merriment, and she agreed to return her light to the world. The mirror became one of her sacred symbols, and it represented the truth, because it merely reflected what it was shown."

They sat in silence for a long time, hand in hand.

.x.

It was impossible for Britt to sleep that night. Her skin resonated with Santana, and she couldn't work herself to unconsciousness since she was still forbidden from practice. She rolled out of her futon and crept over to her tansu. She lifted the lid and retrieved a handful of items, then silently crossed the room and opened the sliding door. The world shone silver with moonlight and the earth was cool under her bare feet as she walked to the garden and laid out the parchment and the ink. Then she took up the brush and allowed what was in her heart to escape into the ink drying on the page.

_I climb the mountain  
And the hills covered in snow  
Show my reflection._

* * *

Author's Note: A special thank you to kairos27 for the haiku, and to ehefic and The Rev (gleedcanon) for the support. You can find them all on Tumblr.


	4. Four

**Trigger warning:** unwanted sexual advances

* * *

Overtaken by darkness  
I will lodge under  
the boughs of a tree.  
Flowers alone  
host me tonight.  
— Taira-no-Tadanori (1144-1184)

Britt found the paper next to her pillow. All it had was a name and an address in Shinjuku. It was time for another job.

The address led to a condo in a high-rise apartment building in the upscale neighborhood of Yotsuya. It was owned by the man whose name was on the paper, Nishimura Kichirou. He had a clean record, not even a parking ticket, and no outstanding tax liens. It looked very respectable, but like many things that floated at the surface, it was nowhere near the whole picture.

Britt called Otter, more out of politeness than to check if she was around. During the day, Otter was always available, holed up in her loft surrounded by computer screens and other bits of mysterious electronic gadgetry. It was at night that she'd disappear into the underbelly of the city, seeking situations that only came out after the sun set. Two sides of the same line of work.

Otter dealt in information, and Britt had employed her services for years. They'd first met in Harajuku, back when Otter was a sullen teenager who spent her days hanging out with her zoku and honing her knack for knowing all the neighborhood dirt. Britt had been barely more than a teenager herself. Over the years, Otter had built a booming business and a reputation for accuracy — and discretion.

The line picked up on the second ring. "What?"

"Nice to talk to you too, Otter."

"Ahh, Britt. I was just thinking about you the other day."

Britt let her continue.

"You wouldn't happen to know any American Senators, would you?" She sounded as pleased as a cat that had fallen into a mouse's nest.

Britt sent a silent prayer of thanks for encrypted voice calling, and said dryly, "No, I don't."

"That's good. Couple of interesting rumors floating around that incident. You might want to hear them."

"I am, but I have another request as well. Are you available?"

"For you? Come on over."

Britt made her way to Shibuya and a converted textile factory building that now housed one room mansions and a handful of lofts for the young money crowd. With the rates Otter charged, she could certainly afford it.

Otter buzzed her in, and she climbed the stairs to the top floor. She didn't even need to knock on the door before she heard the mechanical sound of the door locks opening. There was no flicker of movement in the door's peephole — Britt knew that on the other side was a camera, and that when she pushed open the door, Otter would be at her usual place at her desk next to floor-to-ceiling windows.

"Good to see you, Britt." Otter pushed her chair back from the desk, and reached over for another one, rolling it over in Britt's direction. Britt sat down. Otter grinned. She had always been painfully thin, skin wrapped over bones, inked with a growing collection of tattoos, and her hair in an ever-changing array of colors and styles. Today it was white-blonde, razor cut at the back and sides and long on top, with bangs that fell across her eyes. "What can I do for you today?"

"I'm looking for information on a Nishimura Kichirou. Lives in Yotsuya."

Otter flicked through the filing system in her head. "Yes, I know that name. He's a small time pimp who thinks he's bigger than he really is. Owns a brothel and a love hotel in Kabukichō."

"Anything else?"

"Nothing that immediately comes to mind. But I can find out. You looking for the usual?"

Britt nodded. "What he owns. Business dealings. Where he spends his time."

"That shouldn't take more than a couple of hours. I can even have it ready for you by tonight."

"At your usual rate?"

"You got it."

Britt pulled out her money clip and peeled off two 10,000 Yen notes and a 5,000 note and handed them over. They immediately disappeared into the scattered pile of papers on Otter's desk. "Tell me about these rumors."

Otter leaned back in her seat, trying very hard to seem casual, but her glittering eyes gave her away. "They're saying that the Yamaguchi-gumi hired the Tiger clan to off the white kid." She paused. "No offense."

"None taken." Britt kept her face neutral. "Who's saying?"

"You know, the usual. But that also includes the editors for the big dailies."

"The angle being..."

"Ripping the government for putting too many resources into the investigation at the US's behest. The usual conservative rhetoric."

"I see."

"Do you?" Otter watched her carefully. "That explanation's a little too convenient, don't you think?"

"I care little for the dealings of the Yakuza."

Otter smirked. "Except when they're paying you."

"True enough. And how is the investigation going?"

"Poorly. It was a professional hit, officially. Unofficially, the word within the TMPD is shinobi, based on witness testimony. They've nothing to go on, which is why they've shifted their attention to the Yamaguchi-gumi."

Britt's expression remained blank. "Who's the witness?"

Otter shook her head. "Unknown. Amazing that they've managed to keep all the details from leaking, but I wouldn't be surprised if the PSB has locked it all down."

"Not forever."

"Never forever."

Britt handed over another 10,000 note.

"I'll have that information ready for you tonight. And that reminds me: there's a rockabilly show tonight at Urga. Want to go?"

Otter had asked her to so many events so many times, and Britt had said no so many times, that it had become a running joke between them. Otter's intent was strictly friendly — she preferred beautiful young men — but Britt never saw a point to attending such events when her interest in culture was largely academic.

But then she surprised herself — and Otter — by saying yes.

Otter sat straight up in her chair. "Are you serious?"

"Can I bring a guest?"

Otter's delighted laugh told her the answer.

.x.

Britt waited for Santana outside of the lecture hall, sitting in the open on the raised edge of the small reflection pool between the buildings, and when Santana walked out the doors, she didn't look all that surprised to see her. Santana slipped her bag off her shoulder and sat down next to Britt, and the way she gleamed in the sunlight made everything else drab in comparison.

"Funny how we keep running into each other like this. I'm beginning to think it's not a coincidence."

"No, it's not a coincidence."

"It's not, huh?" She sounded amused.

"I can't help it if you're stalking me."

Santana blinked. "Did you just make a joke?"

"Maybe."

"Liar." Then, more to herself, she said, "She jokes!" and looked at Britt thoughtfully. "You know, this is the third time we've spoken and I still don't know your name."

"Shinobi don't have names," Britt said seriously.

"Is that a joke or a lie?"

"Both."

"Very well. I'm going to assume you already know my name, if you've figured out where I'm staying and where I'm teaching."

"That is correct, Santana Lopez." Britt liked how Santana's name sounded out loud.

"Hmm. So what else can you do?" she asked, and her voice had a little extra edge to it that wasn't just amusement.

"I can ask you if you have plans for tonight."

Santana went silent with surprise. "That's so not what I was expecting you to say," she said after a long moment. "What are you proposing?"

"There's a concert tonight in Shinjuku, and I thought you might want to come with me."

"And why would I want to do that?"

"Because I still owe you for that concussion I gave you."

"That's for damn sure." She tried to sound serious, but her excited curiosity wouldn't be contained. "What kind of concert?"

"It was described to me as 'rockabilly.'"

"Japanese rockabilly? I'm intrigued. All right, nameless shinobi, I'll go with you to this concert."

"I'll pick you up at six-thirty."

"I'll be ready." Santana stood up and shouldered her bag, and took three steps before Britt spoke again.

"Britt." It felt strange to say it. "That's my name."

Santana turned around and smiled. "Then I'll see you at six-thirty, Britt."

.x.

Britt arrived at the front gate of the ryokan precisely at six-thirty. A taxi waited in the narrow street behind her, the sound of its motor growling against the concrete of the surrounding buildings. She pushed the door open and stepped inside the foyer. Voices approached from down the hallway, Santana's voice, and that of the innkeeper. Britt smoothed on a face that was relaxed and friendly.

"I'll be back later tonight," Santana was saying. She was wearing an outfit well-suited for the occasion: a black tank top, tight jeans, and chunky black boots. Her hair was swept up into a loose knot and she wore more makeup than usual, dark smoke at her eyes and red lipstick. She smiled when she saw Britt. "Mrs. Kuwahara, this is my friend, Britt."

Britt smiled and bowed. "A pleasure to see you again, Grandmother," she said in her halting Japanese, and Santana's eyebrow arched.

Mrs. Kuwahara waved them toward the front door. "Go, go," she said. "You'll be late." She turned to Britt and added, "Please take care of Lopez-sama."

"I will," Britt said. She closed the door behind them. "You know, Mrs. Kuwahara doesn't speak a word of English."

"Oh, I'm aware of that, but we've come to an understanding."

They walked to the waiting taxi, and Santana stopped short of the door. Apparently she was familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the Tokyo taxi fleet. The door swung open, propelled from the inside, and Britt gestured for Santana to enter before taking a seat herself. They left a polite amount of distance between them.

"I'll never get used to that door thing," Santana said after Britt had given the driver the address and the taxi swayed into motion. "Taxis don't do that back home."

It occurred to Britt that they knew very little about each other. "Where's home?"

"Huntington Beach. California. But I grew up in Ohio."

"Ohio State fan?"

"Hell no. I went to Stanford. Finn went to..." she trailed off when she realized she'd mentioned his name, and looked away out the window.

Britt found it strange, sitting in this car with a woman who had been a hair's-breadth away from dying by her hand. She expected some reaction from Santana: a shift away, an imperceptible lean, a hand wrapped tightly around a door handle. Walls going up.

Instead, Santana turned almost completely around to face her. "I hated him for a long time," she said, as if that would explain it all. "We went to high school together, and I was in love with my best friend, but he wanted her desperately. And one day, he stood in the middle of a hallway and outed me to the entire school, thinking that it would drive her away. His dad was running for the Senate at the time, and someone overheard and tried to use it against him in a campaign ad. And then everyone in Ohio knew. I thought it was the end of the world." Then she smiled, tight and humorless. "I was young, and I had no idea what tragedy really meant."

"But now you do." Britt thought back to that night at the ryokan, Santana's fingers touching her own, and those knowing eyes.

"Yes. That lesson came a few years later."

They sat in silence, until the driver turned down a narrow side street and pulled up in front of a tiny Korean market. Britt handed the driver two 1,000 Yen notes before he drove away.

"Covered by your expense account?" Santana said.

"Something like that."

"I'm sorry for getting all heavy back there. I didn't mean to drag down the mood."

"You didn't. And you don't have to apologize."

The entrance to Urga was a nondescript stairway that climbed into a building that could have easily been mistaken for an office. Britt paid at the door, and she handed Santana one of the two small slips of paper that came with admission. "Drink ticket," she said at Santana's curious look.

The club was dark, but clean. It was very Japanese; even the grimiest of their adopted subcultures couldn't budge that trait from the collective consciousness. The air smelled of cigarette smoke and dancing, and they moved through the murk and the clusters of perfectly dressed zoku to the bar at the back of the space. Santana's eyes were ink-black in the dark and watching, taking it all in, but Britt noticed that she remained in the periphery of Santana's vision at all times, and that Santana was watching her almost as much as she was watching the crowd.

Britt wondered what Santana saw, because she felt scattered, pulled between her need to be on alert and a new kind of need, to watch Santana, to see what she was doing and know what she was thinking. And then there was the matter of the concert itself, and how she'd been to countless bars, and clubs, and shows, but never because she'd wanted to, and never with another person. She tried to think of how it should go, what Santana would expect.

"Can I get you something to drink?" she finally asked. She had to speak loudly to be heard over the music playing over the house sound system.

Santana leaned in close and said, "Bourbon and a beer."

"Any preference?"

"Surprise me." Then she looked pointedly at Britt and said, "And get something for yourself."

Britt's expression must have given her thoughts away because Santana smiled smugly and said, "You're not on the clock right now, are you?"

The bar was crowded, and it took Britt a while to get the bartender's attention. It almost always did unless she was in a place that catered to foreigners. A minute later she returned with two bottles of Kirin and a shot glass.

Santana eyed the shot. "What is it?"

"Maker's 46."

"Good choice." She took a sip and her nostrils flared and Britt couldn't tell if it was from the burn or from pleasure or both.

"I wouldn't know."

"Then you have to try," she said, and she handed Britt the glass.

It burned like a fireball before settling into a smooth, lingering finish. As she handed the glass back to Santana, a flash of white-blonde hair at the edge of her vision caught her attention, and she turned to see Otter approaching.

"Hey, Britt." Otter wore a denim jacket with the sleeves cut off, distressed too perfectly to be vintage. Tattoos of various kami twined in vivid bursts down both of her arms, and spiky bits of metal circled several of her fingers. "So miracles do happen."

Santana eyed Otter, then Britt, with surprise and curiosity.

Britt switched to English. "Otter, this is Santana. Santana, this is Otter."

They shook hands, and Otter said in serviceable English, "Nice to meet you, Santana. I knew it had to be something important to get Britt to come out and enjoy herself for once in her life."

Britt felt heat rising in her cheeks and took a long pull from her beer.

"I gotta go and make the rounds, but I've got the stuff you wanted. Catch me after the show, OK?" Then she was off and sliding back into the crowd.

"'Something important', huh? I take it you don't do this very often."

"No." Britt stared at the label on her beer and refused to look up into Santana's eyes because she didn't want to know what she'd find there. "And Otter doesn't know me very well."

"Oh, I think she knows you better than you think," Santana said, and she nodded once and finished off her shot and reached over and set the empty glass on the bar. "Come on, let's get closer to the stage."

.x.

The concert was a jarring mix of Americana and modern Japan. As with many things, the Japanese had taken something that originated elsewhere — in this case, the rock 'n' roll popular among American servicemen during Occupation-era Japan — and refined it into its purest essence. The house was packed by the time the headliner took the stage, dressed to the nines, with a bass player in a dapper fur coat who played a stand-up bass with hot-rod flames painted on it in blue metalflake and a lead singer who strutted her way across the stage, every bit the rock 'n' roll vamp.

Britt stuck close to Santana as they drifted through the crowd, and tried to reassure herself that there wasn't a threat within, that the young man sporting an impressive pompadour and custom tailored leather jacket and pants was just a true fan and not death in disguise, that the woman in the capris and body-hugging leotard straight out of the 50s by way of the tattoo parlor — judging by the half sleeves that ran from shoulder to elbow — would wake up the next morning and pull on a skirt and a long-sleeved blouse for another day of work at an international conglomerate, instead of lying in wait to jump them somewhere outside.

And if there weren't any threats now, there was always the possibility of tomorrow, and the day after that, until the time came that she'd make a mistake, and that would be the end. Hopefully swiftly and with her eyes open, but the choice of a peaceful death was a luxury she'd never have.

Santana was looking at her with a troubled expression, and Britt knew that her dark thoughts were probably plain across her face. So she allowed herself to think, just for a moment, what it would be like to live a life where everything wasn't a threat. A life with Santana. And for a moment, it was glorious. Santana's hands in hers. Waking up in the morning with Santana the first thing she saw. Watching the sun set over the ocean, Santana's face alight with a smile, and the luxury of time unfurling like a ribbon in the wind.

"I don't know where you just went, but it looked amazing."

"It was." The truth, in all of its impossibility.

Then Santana held out both hands and said, "Dance with me."

Britt stopped thinking, until she felt Santana take her hands, felt herself being pulled to the edge of the crowd. Santana's eyes sparkled in the stage lights, and she moved easily and freely in time with the music, her muscles sliding like polished metal under her skin. At least one of them knew what she was doing, because Britt certainly didn't, though she tried her best to keep up despite the distractions of Santana's fingers linked in her own and the way the lights cast colorful shadows across the angles of Santana's face. Santana smiled and guided Britt into a turn. Then she pulled Britt closer and said, conspiratorially, "I don't usually lead, so I'm making this up as I go along," and they danced and Santana's skin darkened and shone lightly with sweat, and every time they touched it was like a string being wrapped around them.

Then the song ended and Britt felt herself smile, because for a few minutes she'd forgotten who she was, and the sensation was so unexpected that her perspective shifted, and she no longer felt herself smiling as if she was outside of her body — she was smiling, and it was real, and Santana looked at her with surprised satisfaction.

Britt squeezed Santana's hand and said, "Thank you," and it was for more than just the dance.

.x.

Otter caught up to them after the show ended and the house lights came on. She'd asked Santana what she thought of the show, which launched them into a conversation about American musical influences and anti-authoritarian messages in a conforming society. Britt guessed they'd be at it for a while, and she felt safe enough to excuse herself for the bathroom. They were still talking when she returned.

"My turn," Santana said, and she hopped off her bar stool and walked to the bathroom, navigating the crowd as graceful as a crane.

"She's beautiful," Otter said.

"Yes."

"You have excellent taste."

Britt looked at Otter, her expression hard. "I have an interest in seeing that she remains alive."

"Business, then."

"You could say that."

Otter didn't look very convinced, but she didn't press the issue, and they sat in companionable silence for several minutes until Otter spoke again. "I almost forgot. Here's the information you wanted." She handed over a thumb drive. Someone's life, digitized and stored on something smaller than the tip of a finger. "You didn't get it from me."

"And I never asked." Business.

A moment later, Santana slipped back into her seat, and when she looked from Britt, to Otter, and back again, her face was unreadable.

.x.

They didn't speak during the taxi ride back, preferring instead to reflect on whatever epiphanies they'd discovered. But they sat close enough for their legs to touch whenever the driver took a turn at just the right speed.

After the taxi dropped them off, and they stood in front of the ryokan's door, Santana turned to her and said, "You didn't use me as cover for something tonight, did you?"

The question shouldn't have bothered Britt, but it did. She managed to keep her voice steady as she said, "No," even though the implication stung her heart.

"Because I like you, Britt. A lot. But it's like you're two different people, and I can't get caught up in that other side of you."

Joy and despair. Yin and yang. The price of feeling. "I won't put you in more danger than I already have."

"I know. You promised, remember?" Santana smiled, small and sad, and Britt suddenly hated herself for wanting something she didn't deserve.

"I... This will be the last time I see you. If that's what you want." She couldn't stop herself from saying it, and the words sounded hollow in her ears, as if she were speaking out a mask.

"Britt. Look at me."

She couldn't, and didn't, until she felt Santana's hand cup her cheek.

"I want to see you again." Santana's voice was insistent. "Do you understand? I want you to come and see me again. Promise me."

Britt nodded, mutely, and tried to burn the feeling of Santana's hand against her cheek into her memory. But now she had two promises to keep, two promises that were mutually exclusive.

Joy and despair.

.x.

Otter's information had made Nishimura Kichirou easy to find. He spent his days in his fashionable Yotsuya condo and his evenings in Kabukichō, Tokyo's red light district. Under the surface was an unpleasant man.

He'd started out as a street pimp, working himself up on the backs of whores until he'd bought himself a brothel. But then he got greedy and began to expand into legitimate businesses, and soon discovered that it was hard to run a business when you couldn't slap people around. A string of business failures left him in a significant amount of debt to interests that considered death an acceptable penalty for default.

Britt spent the better part of an evening watching the brothel as it did brisk business. She ignored the main entrance in favor of the side entrance around the corner. Nishimura employed scores of prostitutes, many of them teenagers, and she watched them come up to the door, their eyes dull and heavy with hopelessness. She understood them, in a way. They, like her, were just bodies for hire.

When a man with his arms wrapped around two young women approached the entrance, Britt knew she'd found her target. He was about her height, lanky, and his expensive clothes seemed too big for his frame. The three of them disappeared into the brothel, and Britt hopped down off her perch. The safehouse in Okubo, with its stash of street clothes and supplies, awaited her.

For a man in a great deal of danger, Nishimura's behavior was oddly unconcerned. Otter's notes listed several prominent nightclubs across Kabukichō, the result of the trail of money he'd left in a string of VIP rooms behind him.

The third nightclub on the list was thankfully one that didn't mind letting in a well-dressed blonde gaikokujin inside. She walked through the crowd and climbed the central staircase that led to a balcony above. The balcony overlooked the dance floor, and she found a spot to sit and observe where she had a clear view of the VIP booths in the back. And there he was, sitting in the center of a booth between four young women, already quite drunk and laughing uproariously. The women laughed too, fake, forced laughter borne out of necessity. The one to his right looked down and squirmed away, and Britt could see her top askew and one of his hands underneath, groping her in plain view. Britt narrowed her eyes.

The girl in the booth was struggling now, and his expression changed to one of anger, and he pulled out his hand and struck her, hard, with the back of his knuckles. She gave a quiet cry, and clutched at her face with her hands. He was yelling now, though Britt couldn't make out the exact words over the thumping music from the dance floor. Britt's fingers twitched.

The three remaining women began to run interference, two plying him with more alcohol while the one to his left rubbed his arm soothingly. They probably hoped to get him drunk enough to pass out. But he was beyond soothing now, and he pushed the two women to his left aside and slid out of the booth, stumbling to his feet.

He shoved his way through the dance floor, and Britt followed, watching him as she skirted the edge of the crowd. He burst outside and started walking up the street, very nearly tripping over a trash bin before he reached the next intersection and crossed the street. She was already picking up her pace before she realized what she was doing, and right behind him on the sidewalk before she'd made up her mind. She slid one arm inside his own and used her other hand to rub against his chest, slurring, "Walk with me?" in his ear. They looked like a pair of drunks stumbling their way to the bedroom.

He was leering at her now, his alcohol-soaked breath in her ear, and she gave him a flirty smile and said, "Want some company?" as she led him around a corner and into an alleyway off the street. The fabric of his trousers at his crotch jumped, and he was thinking with his dick now, and so drunk that he didn't even notice that she'd stepped back out of his grasp and slipped on a pair of gloves.

Two steps, then she had a hand in his hair and the other at his back, and she slammed him into the edge of a dumpster, gut-first, knocking his wind out. She brought her hands up, knowing that in his drunken state his muscles would be so relaxed that she'd have little room for error, and she moved suddenly and forcefully and broke his neck with a twist. Then she patted him down and pulled his wallet and cellphone out of his jacket pocket, lifted him up, and tossed him inside the dumpster. It took less than thirty seconds.

She ripped the battery out of the back of the phone and removed her gloves, tucking them, the wallet, and phone into the stash pocket she wore in a belt around her midsection. She walked up the alley to the street on the other end. It was clear. She kept her manner relaxed and unhurried despite the adrenaline pounding of her heart, and let her legs create distance between her and the corpse she'd left behind. There were people on the next street up ahead, more crowds to wade through, more possible witnesses. But people meant transport. If she could get out of this block she'd be fine.

It was so incredibly risky that she couldn't believe she'd done it. Were there cameras outside on the street? Did she leave anything behind? But there was no time for "were"s, "did"s, of "if"s. No time to think. Just move.

She turned and crossed the street once she reached the intersection. More people. Traffic. A green light in a car window. She must have flagged the taxi down because it pulled up beside her, and then she was inside and saying, "Okubo." The safehouse. She could get rid of the target's wallet and phone. It could work.

But if it didn't, she had nothing to lose.


	5. Five

I raise the mirror of my life  
Up to my face: sixty years.  
With a swing I smash the reflection—  
The world as usual  
All in its place.  
— Taigen Sofu (c. 1600)

There was no mention of the discovery of a mysterious body in Kabukichō in the papers the next morning. Nishimura had played the part of a wealthy bachelor to the grave, and it was doubtful that the prostitutes formerly under his employ would be making much of an effort to pay his toll across the Sanzu River. It could be days before someone noticed he was missing, and the longer the body stayed cold, the better.

This was the time for Britt to lay low, to let the TMPD run around in circles until they scratched their heads and turned their noses up the unpleasant dirt they'd dug up on the deceased and filed the case under the Kabukichō trademark of "unsolved gang-related murders". But when she returned to Hachiōji that afternoon, Master Kazuo stopped her and handed her another piece of paper, another name, another set of instructions, before she'd even had a chance to tell him that Nishimura was dead.

Britt took it without saying a word and piled it on top of the jumbled heap of her thoughts.

She retreated to the dojo and sank herself into katas. Sanchin. Tensho. There was no job to be done, no need to figure out why she'd killed Nishimura on an impulse fueled by anger, no Santana, no promises to keep, no promises to break.

When she was finished, she lay on her back in the middle of the dojo floor and breathed deeply, until each ridge in the tatami beneath her felt individual and distinct and she floated like seaweed on the surface of her thoughts as turmoil crashed like waves below. She waited patiently, allowing each wave to roll underneath until all the waves were exhausted, and as the waters stilled they revealed their jagged catalyst: her inability to control her growing feelings.

She'd spent too long in foolish rigidity, fighting to control something that was bigger than she was. It was as if she'd planted a seed from a great Sugi tree in a flower pot and expected it to remain contained as it grew. These feelings weren't going to go away, and when she looked inwards, hard and honestly, she realized that she didn't want them to. Rigidity had led to nothing but unnecessary risk. It was time to bend.

.x.

Britt did not visit Santana that day, but as the sun dropped low against the sky and the shadows of the pine trees that surrounded the dojo grounds grew long and sharp, she sat in the garden with a brush in her hand and her hand over a blank page.

She was no poet, but she knew the traditional forms and found solace in their structure and economy of language. She enjoyed how forms that seemed at first to be impossibly limiting could take flight with multiple layers of meaning. One word, literal. The same word, evoking the season, or a time or place, or the truth or a lie, often all at the same time.

To wield a brush was to have one chance to put words onto the page, and as with wielding a blade there could be no hesitation, no doubt lurking within the hand, or it would show in the final result, be it on paper or in the parting of flesh. She went to the place of nothing and came back with words, her hand steady and flowing.

_The sound of thunder_  
_ accompanied our meeting:_  
_ a midsummer's rain._

It was twilight, but the heat from the day still clung to the air and the ink dried quickly. Britt gathered her writing tools. Tonight she would enjoy peace while she had it.

.x.

The next morning, Britt packed a duffel bag of clothing and took the train to Shibuya Station. She stopped by Otter's, to commission another dossier, and then hopped back on the subway to Okubo. She walked from the station through streets lined with all things Korean: shops, restaurants, and nightclubs, until she reached a quiet side street and a door to a nondescript building. The safehouse was a one room apartment with a private entrance and bath and multiple ways to escape, and it would serve as the base from which she'd operate for the next few days until the job was done.

A low table ran along one side of the room. Next to it was a squat footlocker with a heavy duty lock. She unlocked the lid and unpacked the contents, laying each item out on the table. A set of needle-like bo-shuriken. Metsubushi, packets of metal shavings that could be used to blind an opponent and facilitate an escape. A grappling hook and line. A garotte. A lock pick gun. A trauma kit. The bladed weapons were stored in another lockbox hidden under the floor, and they would remain there until she needed them. Much of it was part of her standard equipment payload, and though this particular job was a straightforward break-and-take, there was always a chance it could take an unexpected turn into something more.

It was almost noon. She took a break for lunch, stopping in at a tiny Korean noodle shop around the corner, where the grandmother who owned the place always insisted on giving her an extra order of kimchi. Okubo was a densely multicultural neighborhood, but it was mostly inhabited by new Koreans — Koreans who had arrived in Japan during the booming eighties and brought with them their dreams, their money, and a refusal to cut ties with their home country. The grandmother who stood next to the register insisting, "No, no charge. You need to eat more, you're too skinny," was a Zainichi Korean. She, like Britt, understood what it meant to be born, in a quirk of fate, into a society that would never truly accept them. Home was Japan, not Korea, not the US, and they had no choice but to make the best of it they could.

Britt ate at a table with her back to the wall and a clear view of the room. The food was excellent, as it always was, the bulgogi beef tender and sweet without being cloying, and the kimchi just hot enough to make her nose sweat.

Her phone vibrated. Otter.

"Britt, I have that stuff you wanted. I'm busy until six, so show up after then, okay?"

She did.

Otter handed her a thumb drive and money traded hands. "I left a note in there, but he's going to be traveling to Seoul next week. Lucky timing for you."

"Indeed."

"I wonder what he's working on, anyway."

"Perhaps he's building a time machine."

Otter smirked. "I bet Sony wants all over that. They'd call it the TimeMan or the Timeulon or something ridiculous."

A response popped into Britt's head, but instead of smothering it as she usually would, she let it out and said, "TimeStation," in an uncannily accurate imitation of the ubiquitous "PlayStation" advertisement. Otter looked at her in surprise before doubling over in a fit of laughter.

"I'm glad to see we're good enough friends now for you to reveal a sense of humor," Otter said as she caught her breath. "It only took what, a decade?"

Friends. Is that what this was? Britt decided it was acceptable. "It takes me a long time to warm up to people."

"Yeah, geologic time," Otter teased, but she was already moving on to other things she had in mind. "So get this, the PSB raided one of the Yamaguchi-gumi's district offices the other day. Word got out quickly. Everyone's freaked out."

Apparently, the Public Security Bureau thought the Hudson case was enough of a national security threat to conduct a public raid on the biggest Yakuza syndicate in Japan. Britt considered the implications. It was likely that the PSB had nothing to go on in terms of hard evidence, because she'd left nothing behind — other than Santana, and she wasn't talking — which meant that the Yamaguchi-gumi angle had to have come from somewhere. A setup by the Sumiyoshi-kai? If so, it wasn't a bad maneuver, turning an insult into a power play against your biggest rival. And if that was the case, then it meant that Santana was probably safe. The Sumiyoshi-kai didn't care about Santana. If she talked, it was Britt's problem, because there was nothing to link them to hiring Britt for the job.

It meant that her first promise to Santana might be something she could actually keep.

.x.

Professor Ishihara lived in Bunkyō, in a modest home in a quiet neighborhood within walking distance of Tokyo University. When she saw the address, the first thing she thought of was Santana's ryokan less than a kilometer away. But then she set that thought aside for the matter at hand, and waited until it was full dark before she paid a visit to the Professor's house in person. The street was too small for streetlights, and the only illumination came from the surrounding houses themselves and the occasional porch light. A light was on upstairs. Someone was up later than she would expect at this hour. She remained motionless in the shadows inside a nook between two neighboring houses, watching, waiting, until the light went out and she walked by, mapping out the entrances and the topography of the area down to the potted plants next to the front door.

Satisfied, she walked away up the street, not in the direction of Okubo, but toward Santana, and it was a simple matter to scale the garden wall, to hop from rock to rock in the garden, reaching down momentarily to pick up a palm-sized stone, until she stood before the door to Santana's room. She listened to the nighttime silence for several moments before she pulled a sheet of paper from her pocket. Set it on the threshold with the stone holding it in place. And then she returned the way she came. It wasn't a true visit, but it was a beginning.

.x.

She returned to the ryokan the next night, and found a different sheet of paper under the stone. Her hand shook as she picked it up and tucked it into a pocket, and Okubo seemed very far away. She made it as far as Hakusan Street before she was lifting the paper up to the light of a streetlamp.

The paper held a poem, written in English in Santana's looping and confident hand.

_The full moon_  
_ Shines its light of reflection_  
_ Over both of us._

That night, Britt sat in the safehouse with the lights off and the window shades open, at the low table surrounded by tools of destruction, and wrote another poem.

_My thoughts are_  
_ scattered like autumn leaves—_  
_ your scent in the wind._

Another day, another sheet of paper, another poem from Santana's hand.

_River stones worn smooth,_  
_ I gather them in handfuls_  
_ And hold them close._

Another night of thinking, of waiting.

_Footprints on new snow,_  
_ the signs of your passing_  
_ cannot be undone._

Another day, the hours crawling by slower than they'd ever passed before, burdened by anticipation. Another non-visit. Another poem read under a streetlight.

_Come Wind, if you must_  
_ Carry the blossoms over_  
_ The high garden wall_  
_ Where none will see them again_  
_ At least let me see them, first._

And at the very bottom, an extra line sat offset from those that preceded it.

_Keep your promise._

.x.

The next day, Britt waited in her preferred spot next to the reflection pool outside of the lecture hall. Santana smiled, wide and knowing, as soon as she saw Britt. "Sometimes I'm glad I'm so predictable," she said as she sat down.

"I'm also glad you're predictable."

"Hey now, I could surprise you one day."

_You already have._ "Perhaps you could wait to surprise me until after you've answered if you'd like to go on a walk with me."

"A walk? Sure. But can we stop by my room first so I can change out of these?" She wiggled her high heeled feet, and the gesture made her look younger and less professorial.

Five minutes later found them well on their way to the ryokan.

"Did you follow me this way, before you visited me the first time?" Santana said.

Britt nodded.

"Tell me how."

Britt explained how she'd stuck to the blind spots behind Santana's shoulders, how she'd navigated the crowds while using them for cover, how she used distance to her advantage. Santana listened attentively. A glimpse into a secret world.

"Now that you've told me your secret, are you going to have to kill me?"

"That would be breaking my promise." Britt smiled.

Britt waited in the foyer of the ryokan while Santana changed, and it seemed no time at all before Santana returned wearing jeans, a tight grey henley button tee, and black Chucks. She looked relaxed and beautiful.

"So where are we going?" she asked once they'd fallen into step, walking to the southwest.

"The Koishikawa Kōrakuen." Britt smiled at her confused look. "You'll see when we get there."

The Allied bombardment of Toyko during World War II had demolished half the city, and it had been rebuilt in such a hurry and with such density that the only green space left was in carefully preserved and delineated parks and gardens. One of the survivors was the Koishikawa Kōrakuen garden. It was nearly 400 years old, and it had seen daimyos and shoguns, emperors and prime ministers come and go.

It was slightly less than two kilometers from the ryokan to the garden, and the route took them through the densely urban heart of the Kasuga neighborhood. It was a beautiful afternoon, the bright sunlight making everything look sharp and clean. Britt set a brisk pace, and took delight in the feeling of blood pumping through her muscles as her feet ate distance. Santana kept right up, asking the occasional question about something that had caught her eye, or for a translation, but they mostly walked in silence, enjoying each other's company without saying a word.

The Kōrakuen came into view as they rounded a corner. Santana paused in surprise. "It's like an oasis," she marveled, and then she looked at Britt the same way she had the first time they'd spoken to each other — when Britt felt as exposed as an open book and Santana had said, "I trust you," — like Britt was a puzzle with shifting pieces.

They walked through the entrance gate that pierced the concrete and wrought iron wall that constrained the park, and Britt automatically slipped into the role of the foreign tourist as she stepped up to the booth and paid the small entry fee.

"Is it hard, wearing so many faces?" Santana said after they passed the noise and bustle around the entrance and walked deeper into the park.

"It's a uniform, like your dress shirts and heels."

"Do you ever forget which one's the real one?"

Britt had no answer. She didn't know which one was the real one, or if there was a real one to forget. Could she forget something she didn't know existed in the first place?

Santana let it drop, instead wandering off down the path ahead of her which led to the centerpiece of the garden: a lake with a small island in the middle and a walkway that invited slow strolls around its circumference. The late afternoon sun glinted in arcs across the water's surface like lengths of golden chain and the air was crisp and clean and scrubbed free of the grime of the city. The garden had been designed so that everything within it, every possible view, presented a tableau that was pleasing to the eye. It reeled Santana in on a subtle, invisible line tethered to the lake in the center, just as it had for 400 years worth of visitors before her.

Britt let her wander, content to enjoy the experience of seeing the garden through new eyes. It wasn't as busy as Britt expected it would be, a scattering of families with small children, older men and women out for their daily walk, photographers lugging along tripods and expensive cameras with unwieldy lenses, everyone polite and unintrusive.

Santana followed the garden path clockwise around the lake, past the waterfall that cascaded into a ravine, and the rice paddy with its plantings already tall and vibrant, and the full moon bridge that crossed a stream like the arch of a sea serpent's back.

"Why do they call it that? The full moon bridge?"

Britt held her hand out so that it was flat, her palm facing them. Then she flipped her hand down, like a reflection. "When you look into the water, the reflection of the bridge completes a perfect circle, like a full moon."

They kept walking, until the path rounded back toward the entrance gate, but Britt stopped Santana before she'd gotten too far ahead. "Over here," she said, and she led Santana to a small, unobtrusive path that headed deeper into the corner of the garden, easily missed if one didn't know to look for it. It led them through a grove of green foliage, the air cool with the promise of moisture, and as they walked further the promise was revealed: a small pond with an island, accessible by two narrow stone bridges. Sunlight filtered down through the pines that ringed the pond and cast the space with a milky glow the color of undyed silk.

It wasn't quiet, not with the metropolis around them, but it was peaceful, and the light and the feeling of being surrounded by something sacred made it the kind of place where voices automatically lowered to whispers, where possibilities seemed endless.

Santana stood like a stone statue, as still as the waters of the pond, taking it all in. She breathed softly and slowly. They stood there for a long time, saying nothing.

Then Santana sighed, and her eyes came back to focus and she turned to Britt and said, "This place is incredible."

"Yes, it is."

"Why did you bring me here?" Her eyes were intense.

"I wanted to show you that there's still some green space left in Toyko." It wasn't the explanation Santana was looking for. But Britt didn't know, she had no answers, and she crumbled under the direct confrontation of Santana's gaze. "I also wanted to show you that the radish spirit lives here," she blurted before she even had a chance to think.

"The radish spirit?" Santana's expression was patient.

"Yes." When faced with an overwhelming attack, confuse and evade.

"What does it look like?"

Britt held her hands about two handspans apart. "He looks like a large, white carrot."

"I know what a daikon looks like, you goof."

Britt channeled all her memories of her jujutsu studies under the cranky tutelage of old Master Takahashi into one quick, contemptuous exhalation: "Ssht!" followed by the grave pronouncement, "You've offended him. Now he'll never come out."

Santana looked at her with a mix of skepticism and tentative uncertainty. "I'm sorry, radish spirit?" she offered.

Britt shook her head. "Not good enough."

"What, then?"

"You'll have to..." Britt suddenly reached over and scooped Santana up like a sack of rice, hoisting her over a shoulder and striding purposefully toward the pond. "Bathe in purifying water."

"What! No!" Santana didn't weigh very much, but she was strong and she fought like a demon. Britt clamped her arm around the struggling load and ignored the fists pounding into her back, and when she reached the edge of the water she bent back dramatically, poised to toss her loudly protesting cargo into the pond. She snapped into motion — and set Santana gently on the ground instead of pitching her into the water.

Santana stood on the shore, her cheeks flushed and her eyes on fire. "You're such a troll!" she sputtered, and then she rushed at Britt, trying to tackle her, or push her over, and in a split second, Britt had a choice. She could root her legs to the earth and let Santana bounce harmlessly off her, or she could let go and fall.

She fell.

Britt landed in the grass next to the water, with Santana sprawled on top of her and her arm wrapped around Santana's waist. Her heart accelerated until it beat so quickly and strongly that she was sure Santana could feel it escaping from her chest.

Santana pushed herself up one one arm and looked at Britt with an apologetic expression. "I didn't think you'd let me."

Britt grinned. "Did you really think I'd throw you in the pond?"

"I don't know what to think when it comes to you. Every time I think I've got you figured out you surprise me."

What surprised Britt was how well Santana's body fit against hers, belly to belly, thigh to thigh, and how it could feel new and familiar at the same time.

Santana touched a fingertip to Britt's forehead and trailed it down her nose, to her lips, and then paused there, lingering, and her voice was so quiet that Britt almost missed her say, "I want to kiss you so badly right now," and Britt froze with the familiar feeling of want and terror. "Let me? Please?"

Britt tried to nod, and it came out like a spasm, jerky and hesitant. Santana smiled and lowered her head, touched her lips against Britt's, and everything that had splintered inside Britt over the last two weeks came together with a crash. But unlike a shattered dish that could be pieced back together but would always be missing a shard, or a chip, always less than it had been, Britt felt bigger. Greater. Whole. Santana's lips were soft, gentle, and insistent, and Britt had never felt anything like it her entire life.

"I've been wanting to do that ever since you wrote me a poem about autumn leaves," Santana said once they broke apart.

It took Britt a long time to come back to a place where she could speak. "I see you found a translator."

"My teaching assistant thinks my suitor's very charming."

"I'm not—"

Santana shushed her. "Don't downplay this. It is what it is."

Britt suddenly felt as though a great chasm had opened up before her, so deep the bottom couldn't be seen, and she stood at the edge, tiny in comparison. "What is this?" she asked, small and uncertain, before she realized she'd said it out loud.

"You'll see when we get there," Santana said before kissing her again.

.x.

The sound of a clock tower ringing out four-thirty roused them back to the real world. Santana lifted herself away, and Britt sighed at the loss she felt at the parting. Santana held out her hand and helped Britt to her feet, and she refused to let go as they walked back to the main path and out the entrance gate, all the way back to the ryokan.

"Stay with me?"

"I can't. But the day after tomorrow..." It couldn't come soon enough.

.x.

Professor Ishihara was supposed to have left for Seoul that morning, and Britt called the airport to make sure. Calling the first few airlines on her list left her little to show for it. She dialed the fourth, hoping that her search wouldn't take all morning. "I'm Yosano Katsuko," she said in a brighter, rapid-fire version of her voice, and she recalled her conversation with Santana the previous day. "And I'm a teaching assistant for Professor Ishihara Kohei here at Tokyo University. I need to know if he was on his flight to Seoul this morning."

"What was his flight number?"

"I'm very sorry. He didn't tell me which flight he was on. But you understand that I must make sure the honored Professor arrived safely this morning."

"Of course." The sound of typing. "What is the professor's name again?"

"Ishihara Kohei."

More typing. "Yes, he checked into the nine-fifteen flight to Seoul this morning."

"Excellent. Thank you." Her wait was over.

.x.

Two in the morning and the neighborhood in Bunkyō was sleeping, the only noise the sound of the occasional car from the thoroughfare several blocks away. The professor's car was gone from the driveway. He must have driven himself to the airport. She watched the house for half an hour, but there was no movement within, or in any of the neighboring homes to either side.

She stepped onto the street and walked confidently to the professor's house, as if she was someone who'd been out late and was just now arriving home. Trying to sneak would arouse suspicions much more quickly than presenting a plausible reason for being there, and in a break in she had the relative luxury of time. She put on a pair of gloves as she approached the front door, and reached into the bag slung over her shoulder for the lock pick gun.

The door had only a deadbolt to secure it. Too easy. She leaned against the doorframe, her posture saying fatigue while her body acted as a shield to block the sight of the lock gun jammed into the lock. It bumped open with a quiet thunk.

She opened the door, entered, and closed it behind her. Let her eyes adjust to the darkness. Listened. No warning beep. There was either no alarm or it was the silent kind. She slipped the lock gun back into the bag and scanned the room. No obvious sensors in the corners or in the windows. No control boxes on the walls. It was doubtful there was an alarm system at all.

The professor's home was arranged in the modern style, with permanent walls and carpeting. A staircase led up to a second floor. An office or study would likely be upstairs, so she'd start there first and work her way back down if she came up empty.

She paused at the top of the stairs, watching and listening. The bedroom doors were open. There were two closed doors, one to a room that shared an exterior wall, the other more central to the house. She chose the exterior room, slid the door open, and stepped inside.

She felt them before she saw them. One was a breath of air to the left. The other a slight breeze to the right. Her focus sharpened and time moved like the pages in a flipbook, like frozen snapshots, and in one frame she blocked a blow from above, in the next she'd slipped behind and levered an arm around and down, feeling the pop of a shoulder as it came apart in her hands. More frames, faster now: her hands on both sides of a head, the snap of a spine, a flash of silver, a bloom of pain hot and fierce, an impact against her ribs stealing her breath, her left hand around a wrist twisting it inwards, a muffled cry as her right elbow whipped down and broke the elbow attached to the wrist, her fist shattering a glass-fragile jaw and a head snapping back and a body slumping to the ground.

Her body sang with adrenaline, and for several seconds she heard nothing but the pounding of her heart in her ears. One of the dark colored lumps on the floor began to moan. She knelt beside the nearest lump and her right arm refused to work so she used her left to turn it over. He was young. Japanese. Wearing gloves and street clothes. Dead. The other lump was another young man similar to the first, his nerveless fingers still holding a knife. Barely conscious. She pried the knife out of his hand and fumbled her bag open and dropped it inside.

Moisture began to seep past her elbow. She didn't know exactly where she'd been cut, but she couldn't bleed on the floor. She went to the dead one and stripped him of his shirt. A tiger paw tattoo stood out black against his shoulder. She wound the fabric around her upper arm and used her teeth and her left hand to secure it in a sloppy knot.

She had to risk turning on a light. The room was indeed the professor's office, and the two men on the floor had ransacked it in their search for whatever it was they were here for. The contents of the file cabinets and desk drawers were strewn about the floor. She opened knife-wielder's jacket and patted him down and found a large envelope containing papers and three thumb drives. Judging by the content of the papers it looked like they'd done the job for her. The envelope went into her bag. She removed knife-wielder's gloves and grabbed a nearby file folder and pressed his fingertips against it. Then she repeated the same with the dead man.

Another knife lay under the desk. She picked it up, remembered that her right hand didn't work. Set it back down next to knife-wielder. Flipped him over onto his stomach. Drove her right knee into his back and set the edge of the knife under his neck and let his own weight help her cut his throat. It the opposite of a clean kill, but it couldn't be helped.

She scanned the floor until she was satisfied that, aside from the two dead men, it was clear of any other traces of her presence. Then she turned off the light, slid the door shut behind her, and left the house behind.

She made it two blocks before the adrenaline dump wore off. Her body began to buzz though her right arm felt cold and dead. It hurt to breathe. Cracked ribs. Two, maybe more. She'd have to take a taxi to get back to Okubo, and that was risky because she was obviously injured and couldn't rely on the driver to stay silent once news of the break-in got out. Or she could try to walk seven kilometers without being seen or bleeding all over the pavement. Or there was the third option, the one that was less than a kilometer away. Santana.

Her mind made the decision before it dove into the place of nothing, the place that kept her moving, powered her legs at a steady pace so that she walked with purpose. Just someone out on a late-night stroll. She let her right arm hang loosely and the pain became an afterthought. If anyone saw her, they wouldn't notice anything wrong as long as they didn't look too closely.

It took her fifteen minutes to walk to the ryokan. Her arm was bleeding freely now, her sleeve sticky-wet and clinging to her skin below the makeshift bandage. She followed the garden wall around the corner, to the alley where the trash bin was kept. She rested the palm of her left hand on the flat surface of the lid and pressed herself up on top of the bin. Then she looked over the top edge of the wall at her landing options below. Concrete and scattered gardening tools, a couple of plants to the side. She leaned forward and put her belly against the wall and swung her legs up and over, and then she dropped over the edge.

A concrete landing was always jarring, especially one she couldn't roll out of to bleed off energy, and the pain that exploded from her ribs left her dizzy and breathless. She waited until the feeling passed, then she picked her way around the potted plants and across the threshold until she stood outside Santana's room, her fingers scrabbling at the wooden frame of the sliding door.

"Britt?" Santana's voice was tinged with confusion and heavy with sleep.

Britt's fingers didn't seem to work. Or the door wasn't opening. Or maybe it was both of those things. She slumped against the doorjamb, and it felt good just to rest there with her forehead against the wood.

The door slid open, just a crack. "Britt?" And then it opened wider, wide enough for her to push herself inside. "Britt, what—" she heard Santana say, and then she sank to her knees with a sigh and Santana followed her down to the floor.

"Help... me?" Talking hurt so badly that she could only get out one word at a time.

"Oh my God." A cool hand lifted her chin. "Britt, look at me." She tried. Santana's eyes were wide and black in the darkness. "We've got to get you to a hospital."

Britt shook her head. "Can't."

Santana didn't question her. Instead, she looked Britt over. "What do you need me to do?" Unflappable.

"Bathroom."

Santana helped Britt back to her feet. They hobbled across the room, Santana guiding them out the front door and down the hallway to the shared bathroom.

The bath was divided into two areas, a tub for soaking and a separate shower area for cleansing, and Britt nodded toward the shower. She grunted at the spike of pain that shot through her as she sank to the floor with her back against the wall next to the handheld showerhead. She reached for the knot that held the shirt around her arm in place, found her hand replaced by both of Santana's, and the fabric fell away in a bloody mess. Then Santana helped pull the strap of the pack over her head and set it aside.

Britt reached for the hem of her shirt, and Santana's hands were there too, gently lifting it up over her head, freeing her arms, and finally exposing the cut that ran from just below the back of Britt's shoulder down as far as her triceps. She leaned forward and said, "Look?"

Santana did. "It's clean. About seven or eight inches long."

"Deep?"

"A quarter inch, probably more. Still bleeding."

Britt sighed. She was lucky. If he'd waited a second longer he could have gotten her someplace vital. She reached up and unclipped the harness that held her own knives in their sheaths and Santana helped her out of its shoulder straps before she pulled it free and set it aside too. "Need to clean it."

Santana turned the water on, made sure it was tepid and flowing steadily, but not too hard, and Britt closed her eyes as Santana directed the water into the wound until the water ran pink, then red, down the drain.

The bleeding had to stop before she could do anything else. Britt pulled the pack closer by its strap and opened it. Silver glinted at the bottom and she gingerly reached in and felt around until her fingers hit the handle of the knife. Santana stared at her as she pulled it out handle first, a dried line of blood along the edge of the blade.

"Is that what cut..."

Britt nodded.

"What happened to the person who did it?"

"Dead. Both of them." The thought of it steadied her. They were dead and she was alive. She was alive and Santana was helping her. Being wounded was an inconvenience compared to being dead. And the shock was finally wearing off so efficiency could take its place.

The pain in her arm was now an insistent throb, but manageable. She set the knife on the floor, and reached back into the pack and withdrew the trauma kit. Pulled out the packet of QuikClot. Handed it to Santana, who didn't need to be told what to do before she had the gauze out and pressed against the bleeding. Santana held the gauze in place and her eyes mapped out every scar that crossed the skin before her.

They waited for the bleeding to stop. Britt's focus narrowed to two things: breathing in a way that didn't impale her on a spike of pain every time she moved, and the feeling of Santana's hands, warm on her skin.

"I think it stopped."

"Wait a minute more." She dug around the kit and handed Santana a package of Steri-strips and a vial containing tincture of benzoin.

"I hope you have more than that because I'm going to have to Steri-strip the shit out of this."

Britt nodded and gave her a tight grin as she handed over the whole kit. Gallows humor.

Santana took it from her hand. "This isn't the first time you've been in this situation."

"No." She bled just like everyone else. "Take a look?"

"It's good. I can try to close it up, but I don't know if it'll take."

"It will." She eyed Santana, who already had the benzoin open and a package of Steri-strips ready. "Know what to do?"

Santana nodded and began to dab the syrupy red benzoin in a line down one side of the cut. "Wilderness first responder." She started on the other side. "Though I never thought I'd end up using it for something like this." She pinched the edges together at the center of the cut and laid a strip down across it. "Just for reef cuts or something."

Britt kept her talking, let Santana keep herself calm in her own way. "Reef cuts?"

"While surfing." She moved efficiently, alternating between both ends of the cut and laying strips down in evenly spaced gaps. "Coral is razor sharp."

"California surfer." The image made Britt smile.

"Yeah, I'm a stereotype." She placed final strips along each side of the cut to hold the ends in place. "I think this'll work. Lift?" Britt held her arm up as far as she could while Santana laid a row of gauze on top. Then she took a longer length and wrapped it around Britt's arm and taped it in place.

"Santana." Britt waited until Santana looked up. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." She smiled, her eyes tired and drained. "Now let's get you back to my room so you can rest. And I've got to clean out this bath before anyone else wakes up."

Calm. Efficient. Unflappable.

.x.

Britt awoke to the feeling of a warm body cradling her back, an arm draped across her belly, a steady breath across her neck, and for a moment she thought she had woken up to another life. But the pain and stiffness in her muscles brought her back to Santana's room, after a job that had gone unexpectedly bad and a very long night. The room glowed the sunrise color of rice straw, and she allowed herself a minute to cling to the feeling of Santana surrounding her in every way before she started to slide, slowly and quietly, out of Santana's grasp.

The breath in her ear rumbled into words — "Don't even think about it." — and the body behind her pressed closer. Santana closing the gap. Santana holding her together.

* * *

The tanka "Come Wind, if you must..." was written by **kairos27**. Thank you for the inspiration. :)


	6. Six

If your time to die has come  
and you die— very well!  
If your time to die has come  
and you don't—  
all the better!  
— Sengai Gibon (1750-1837)

Late morning. Britt drifted in the grey places between darkness and waking. The silken cloak of the painkillers she'd taken had fallen away, and pain nipped at her with needle teeth and pulled her back into consciousness. Her whole body hurt, and every breath scraped against broken edges and her brain skipped between thoughts. She grunted and sat up. The skipping went fast, faster, and her vision swirled, black hovering around the edges.

A hand touched her shoulder. Santana. Santana saying, "You need to take this," or "Take these," and Britt tried to say something back and whatever came out made Santana pause.

Pills appeared in Britt's left hand, but her arm, shoulder to elbow, elbow to wrist, felt wrong and out of proportion. What should have been as simple as lifting her hand to her mouth became a game rigged for difficulty, and the prize was the bitter taste of pills on her tongue. The rim of a glass touched her lips. Water, in her mouth, down the front of her throat. She was spilling. She swallowed, and her mouth didn't seem to work. She tried to say _I'm sorry,_ and _I shouldn't be here,_ and _I should go,_ but it came out in a jumble. Her thoughts raced. Santana shouldn't have to deal with this, didn't want to get caught up in this and Britt shook with frustration and shame.

"Shh. Hey." Santana was behind her now, helping her lay back down, and then they were so close that Britt felt Santana's heart beat in unwavering time and it was the only thing that made any sense at all. Santana pressed her hand against Britt's sternum and said, "Britt. It's okay. You're okay. Breathe."

Breathe. Britt closed her eyes. Concentrated on the imprint of Santana's fingers. One through five. Pressure through fingertips, pressure distracting from the pain that radiated down her right side. Pressure. Pain. Pressure. A kind of rhythm.

"With me," Santana was saying, "Breathe with me," and her chest rose and fell in perfect time like her heartbeat, and Britt clung to her, used her as a guide as she fought to turn truncated gasps into oxygen filled breaths. She relaxed into Santana's arms and her tremors broke like waves against a seawall and all she had to do was lay there and breathe and ride out the sudden influx of oxygen in her bloodstream, until the liquid silk of the Percocet began to thread its way through her, shielding her from the worst of the pain but disconnecting her senses.

There was something she had to say. She reached for the right words to match her thoughts, but the Percocet didn't care as it wrapped her thoughts and memories in silken strands and pulled them tight into one continuous thread, and then she didn't feel any pain anymore, didn't feel anything but a heady rush that made it easy to say, "Have you ever watched someone die?" and not wait for an answer. "I was thirteen, and I had to watch because I was the one who murdered him."

"Britt..."

She kept going, because she had to make Santana see that she'd been right to avoid getting caught up with this, with her, and she had to make Santana see because she no longer trusted herself to make the right decisions when Santana was involved. "He was a Yakuza boss with a weakness for American teenagers, and I was the right tool for the job." It surprised her how easily the memories unburied themselves from the dirt. The Catholic school uniform, every detail perfect, from the starched white blouse to the tartan pattern of her skirt. The plastic bag with the syringe and the spoon and the tubing, props for the backstory that explained how an obviously underage gaijin ended up as an escort in a penthouse suite at the Park Hyatt. How the bodyguard saw exactly what he expected to see and let her inside, syringe and all; how the target dismissed the bodyguard and looked at her like an object. "He thought he was going to get laid."

Santana's arm tightened around her.

"I made an excuse to go to the bathroom and got the syringe ready and when I came back, I sat in his lap and let him touch me." His greasy hand on her thigh, reaching under her skirt. His mouth pressed roughly against her own, tasting of sake and cigarettes. And how she left her body, left herself behind like an actor pulling on a role, and how she understood that it wasn't just a role, it was a shield, and when the void opened up inside her, she sent her fear and revulsion into the emptiness and found it vast enough to hold wrongs of this magnitude.

"And then I shot him full of enough vecuronium bromide to kill a bear." He ended up on his back near the edge of the bed and she was on top of him with every advantage of leverage and her forearm against his throat, stealing his voice, stealing his breath. Five seconds, fifteen seconds, thirty seconds. "And I had to pin him down because no one dies easy." No one does. The eyes wild with fear. The sucking gasps for breath. The frenzied strength of muscles that knew this was their last chance at survival. The smell as sphincters relaxed and life evaporated away.

"Britt, stop."

"And after. After, you look at your hands and know — there's no going back. Not ever. You can never... go..." And the Percocet smiled and threw its net over her head and pulled her back into darkness.

.x.

Afternoon. She woke up alone, under blankets that smelled like Santana and wearing Santana's clothes and the feeling of unease, vague and uncertain, faded like ink in sunlight.

Voices. No, just one. Santana, talking on the phone, her voice tense and impatient. "I'm not leaving." A pause. "No, don't do that." The sliding door to the garden was open, and she stood before the doorway, her silhouette black against green. She turned around and looked in Britt's direction. "I'm far safer here than you think," she said, and Britt blinked. "What time is it over there? Midnight?" Santana sighed. "Go to bed, Papa. I'll talk to you later." She said goodbye and looked pensively at her phone — until she noticed Britt watching her. Then she smiled apologetically and said, "I'm sorry I woke you."

"You didn't."

She crossed the room and knelt by the edge of the futon. Her eyes were shadowed and tired, and Britt looked away, knowing that she was the cause.

"Feeling any better?"

Britt nodded. She could feel the Percocet shimmering behind the scenes, pulling the strings tight around what had to be at least two fractured ribs, maybe three, and if she was lucky they'd be cracked instead of broken. The medication took the edge off, but if she moved — _ahh, yes, there it was_ — the pain spiked, intense enough to make her suck in her breath with a hiss.

"Go back to sleep."

"Don't want to." Whatever had gone on inside her head as she slept left her less rested than if she hadn't slept at all. And if she'd said anything while under that opioid spell — no, she didn't want to think about that right now.

"Do you need anything?"

That was unexpected, being asked if she needed anything, and she had to crawl through several seconds' worth of thoughts before she could answer. "Bathroom," she said. It was a shot to her pride, and she remembered other times, other injuries worse than this, and how it was to suffer in private. The bathroom seemed a very long way away.

Then Santana took hold of her good arm and helped her to stand, and they replayed the night before, all the way across the room and down the hall, but this time Britt was aware of more than the immediate goal. She felt the solid strength of Santana's body where they pressed together, hip to hip, and Santana's touch was gentle and patient, the difference between being helped by someone who wanted to instead of someone who had to.

Santana helped her as far as the toilet, then stepped out to give her privacy, and she gritted her teeth and reached for the unfamiliar tie on her pants. The process was slow and painful and frustrating, complicated by having to rely on her left hand to do most of the work, but she managed, and when she was finished, she stood up on her own, panting until the dizzying wave of pain passed, and stepped over to the sink. She washed her hands, scrubbing the dry rust of her own blood out from under her nails until her hands were as clean as they could be without taking karma into account.

She opened the door and leaned against the frame to catch her breath and Santana was right there to help her back to the nest of blankets that covered the futon.

"Before you lay down, let me look at your arm." Britt obediently turned so Santana had a clear view. Searching fingers unwrapped the gauze so Santana could inspect her handiwork. "It's not looking too bad, actually." She sounded surprised. "The color's good, too."

Britt felt no impulse to twist her neck around to confirm Santana's assessment for herself. Interesting. "I knew you'd do a good job."

Santana re-wrapped the gauze and secured the end in place, unconsciously giving it a gentle pat. "Are you sure you don't want to sleep?" she asked as Britt eased herself flat.

"I'd prefer not to."

"You sound like Bartleby."

Britt had no idea who that was. "Who?"

"A character in a story. Sorry, my literature nerd is showing."

Britt suddenly wanted to hear her tell it. "Tell me?"

"The story? It's kind of a downer. I'll give you the CliffsNotes version." And she did, sketching the outline of a story about a man who worked as a clerk in a lawyer's office, a man who one day decided that he'd prefer not to do anything at all, until he eventually died — the result of preferring not to live. Britt considered that, and decided he was an impressive man indeed, to be able to look at his life and have the strength to prefer not to live it. It was more than she could say for herself.

Santana's tone shifted and turned formal as she left the headspace of the retelling and entered the one of analysis. "Some examinations of the story see Bartleby's lack of motivation as an example of clinical depression. In others, Bartleby is a proxy for the narrator's own sense of paralysis as he realizes the mechanical sterility of the world around him."

"What do you think?"

"Me?" She mulled the question over. "He's a protest. He basically says, 'No, I will not live in this world,' and that's his decision, to do nothing until it kills him. The author makes us examine the idea at its most extreme, but I'm not sure I agree."

"Why not?"

"I don't believe in hopelessness."

Britt wondered if she'd ever been tested, been pushed to the point of breaking, been faced with a decision to make and the illusion of options, all of them bad. Life wasn't just unfair, it lied and cheated and stole everything it could take. But Santana wouldn't know that, not from the relative safety of her normal life an ocean away.

"You look so serious right now. Should I be worried?" Santana said, and Britt looked away as if she'd been caught stealing. "I knew I should have picked a fluffier reference."

"I just like listening to you." It came out artlessly.

Then it was Santana's turn to look away. "Do you? Well, if you insist on staying awake and you like listening to me talk, I ought to make it worth your while." She got up and crossed the room to the cabinet against the far wall, slid it open and retrieved a flat, grey object from the shelf, and then she came back and sat down crosslegged at the end of the futon. She patted her thigh and said, "Slide up here," and a moment later Britt's head lay cradled in her lap and Britt's vision was filled with the sight of Santana, upside-down, and she could see that the object in Santana's hands was a Kindle. "I prefer real books," she confided. "The feel of the paper. And the smell. But having an entire library with me is handy," and she scrolled through what Britt imagined was an amazingly long list of books, humming to herself, and then she said, "I think this will work." She looked down at Britt. "Ever read _The Lord of the Rings_?"

Britt furrowed her brows, and remembered posters plastered in front of theaters across town: _The Legend of the Ring_. "The movie?"

"They were books first," Santana said with a knowing grin, and then she cleared her throat and began to read. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."

Her voice changed when she read, stretched and grew rich with imagery and imagination, and she stepped outside of time and into the journey and took Britt with her. Britt wasn't sure of all the references, or what dwarves and elves looked like, but it hardly mattered because somewhere along the way Santana's fingers ended up in her hair, brushing wayward strands aside, grazing fingertips against her scalp, and she closed her eyes and enjoyed the simple pleasure of listening to Santana read.

Santana's voice in her ears and Santana's fingertips on her skin. Another memory to file amongst the good ones; a collection small but growing.

.x.

Early evening. Sunset light streamed through the paper shōji and painted the room in burnt orange and shadows. The sounds of the city were faint and far away.

Santana lay on the tatami next to her, wearing pajama pants and a tank top, propped up on one elbow and reading. Her lips moved silently, words made physical, too focused to notice Britt watching her. Minutes passed. Britt studied the way the light and shadows crossed her face and shoulder, mapping her features, from her skin to her muscles to her bones, and suddenly Britt wanted to reach out and touch that skin, those muscles, those bones the same fearless way Santana had with her. She lifted her hand, but reason stepped in and stopped her, reminded her of _shouldn't_, _didn't_, and _can't_, and she felt like she stood with one foot on the shore and the other perched precariously in a boat floating above a torrent.

Santana looked up. "Hey."

The shore was safer for the both of them. She took an experimental breath, ignored the bite of pain, and moved her legs and arms. Everything seemed to work. She could make it back, or at least as far as a major street and a taxi ride. She could do that. "I should go."

Santana rolled her eyes. "You can't be serious. You're hurt, you're high as a kite, and _I_ could probably take you right now."

Britt grabbed a fistful of Santana's shirt and pulled her down on top of her, and she didn't care how much the movement hurt, not when it brought Santana so close. When had that impulse become reflexive?

"I thought you wanted to leave."

"I thought you could take me."

"Narrative embellishment."

Santana's currents were too strong; they eroded everything out from under her. _But._ "I don't want to inconvenience you."

"You said that a lot. While you were out of it."

"It's the truth."

"Well, you're not an inconvenience."

"What about your lecture today?"

"My TA covered for me."

"But—" She was silenced by Santana's lips and a kiss that rippled through her. Strong currents. Eroding shore.

"You're not an inconvenience. Because _I_ get to decide that, not you." That hadn't occurred to Britt before. "And if this is the one chance I get to spend time with you where you're not climbing over walls or running off mysteriously, then I'm going to take it."

It was the _why_ that Britt didn't understand.

Santana smiled, amused and patient, and she answered Britt's unasked question with a different kind of kiss. It was like a mountain stream, the shock of being awakened by cold water, and Britt opened her mouth and drank Santana in, drank as Santana's fingers traced tributaries into her skin, until she was so full of bracing cold that it started to burn deep inside her.

A rustling sound in the outside hallway caught Britt's attention and she broke away. "Someone's coming down the hall," she said.

Santana didn't seem to care. She rested a fingertip against Britt's eyebrow and said, "Your eyes are so blue right now." But then the rustling turned into a knock, and Santana reluctantly lifted herself away. "I bet that's Mrs. Kuwahara."

It was, and as soon as Santana let her inside she bustled about the room, setting out the low table and a tray of food and a pot of tea as Britt lay within her blankets and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. Mrs. Kuwahara disappeared out into the hall, but quickly returned with another covered bowl which she placed on the table with a nod in Britt's direction. Then she turned, gesturing for Santana to follow her, and when Santana returned she had a bundle of extra bedding in her arms and a smile.

"I think she likes you," she said as she set the bundle down next to Britt's spot on the floor.

"Mmm."

"Well, you do have a way with the ladies. You certainly charmed me, knocking me unconscious instead of saying hello and all."

Britt's face burned and she pulled the blanket up over her head.

A hand patted her belly. "Britt? Is this a ninja trick? Are you hiding in plain sight?"

She peeked over the edge of the blanket.

Santana grinned. "You're cute when you're embarrassed."

She tried to pull the blanket back up but was stopped by Santana's hand and a kiss on the tip of her nose.

"Before you hide again, are you hungry? Do you think you can eat something?"

Food was a good idea, but she wasn't sure if her stomach would cooperate. She nodded and started to sit up, and she'd hardly moved before Santana slipped an arm under her shoulders and helped her the rest of the way. "Is Mrs. Kuwahara all right with me being here?" she asked as Santana carefully pulled the table closer to them both.

"She's fine. I told her you were sick."

That explained what Britt found when she lifted the lid on the bowl: kayu, rice boiled until the grains no longer had the strength to hold themselves together. It was warm and bland and probably the only thing that would agree with her stomach right now. Mrs. Kuwahara had stood in her kitchen and prepared it specially for Britt, a small kindness given without a second thought. She felt it lodge in her chest, wedged tight next to the muscle of her heart.

She used her left hand to pick up the spoon and dip it into the bowl, and was pleased to find it steady as she brought the spoon to her mouth. She ate several spoonfuls, slowly and mechanically, before she looked up and saw Santana watching her.

"Can you use chopsticks left handed?"

"I've never tried. Probably not."

"I can," she said, sounding very pleased with herself.

Britt knew she was being teased. "How about right handed?"

Santana shrugged, flipped a chopstick over to her right hand, and speared a piece of tempura with a forceful thunk. "Yep."

Easy as that. "You win," Britt said, and wheezed out a laugh.

The skewered piece of tempura quickly disappeared, as did the impressive amount of food on the table before Santana. Britt even managed to put away most of the bowl of kayu. And when they were finished, they sat and shared the pot of tea and looked at each other with satisfied smiles.

"Now where were we? Before we were interrupted?" Santana said, and she put a hand on Britt's thigh and leaned in for another kiss.

Easy as that.

.x.

Morning. Late enough for the pink hues of dawn to drain away and for the early risers to depart on the day's business. Britt spent most of it watching Santana sleep, letting her catch up on the deficit she'd accumulated the past two days.

Santana slept with her limbs splayed out like bamboo leaves, deeply unaware of her surroundings. It was a glimpse into the normal world, the one where a person's hindbrain didn't have to be on alert every single moment. Santana's eyes twitched beneath closed lids and her head turned slightly. Then she sighed, and tension reanimated her muscles as her essence poured back into her body. She slid her hand closer to Britt without opening her eyes, searching, until she found Britt's fingers and linked them in her own.

They dozed, sleepy and lazy, hand in hand, Santana sliding closer until she rested her cheek on Britt's shoulder and traced patterns into the fabric over Britt's stomach, and the morning threatened to slip away entirely.

But Britt's hindbrain, always running, always assessing, suddenly roused her awake.

"Are you okay?" Santana asked, but Britt didn't hear her. She was listening to the sound of footsteps approaching down the hallway. The steps were light but made no attempt to conceal themselves, and they stopped outside the door followed by a loud knock.

"Expecting someone?" Britt asked.

"No, but I'm pretty sure I know who it is. Don't worry," Santana said, and stood up to answer the door.

Britt noted the tea pot and cups left over from last night, and the Kindle — all of it within arm's reach. Almost anything could be made a weapon, even the blankets she lay under. She kept her breathing even and pretended to sleep while she watched the proceedings through cracked eyelids.

Santana slid the door open.

"Good morning, Santana." The voice was female. Young.

"Let me guess, he told you where I was staying."

"They're worried about you. I'm worried about you."

"Are you?"

"Don't be like that, Santana. I've known you long enough to know that you're hurting inside, just like I am."

Santana said nothing.

"Aren't you going to invite me in?" This was someone used to getting her way. She pushed past Santana into the room and into Britt's line of sight. She was shorter than Santana, less substantial, and her expensive haircut and designer clothes said money even if it wasn't readily apparent in her manner.

_Don't worry._ Now it made sense. The woman was Rachel Berry, and Britt's secret depended on the quality of the performance Santana would give in the next few minutes.

"What a lovely room. It's so quaint and — Oh, you have a guest."

"She's not feeling well. And you're disturbing her rest."

"I'll be brief. Your father asked me a personal favor to come down here and see if you were all right."

"And I am. Really."

"Santana, you know it's not safe here. Finn's murderer is still out there. What if he comes for me? Or you?"

Santana didn't blink, didn't waver, didn't say a word.

Rachel pressed on. "I mean, if I can cancel my concerts, surely you can reschedule your sabbatical."

"I'm not leaving."

Rachel sighed, the kind that said, _See? Look how you're inconveniencing me._ "I didn't think you would. But your father..."

"Put you up to it."

"And I'm worried about you. You've changed so much—"

"Since high school? How would you know? The night I got here was the first time we've talked in years."

"Since she died." Santana went rigid. "I miss him. And you know what that feels like." Rachel sounded small. Diminished.

"No, I don't know what it's like to miss Finn." This was a different Santana, defiant and bitter, but present enough to immediately realize what she'd said. She sighed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that."

"I'm the one who should apologize. I shouldn't have brought it up." They looked at each other in the awkward way of two people who had little in common but found themselves forced into the same orbit. "Anyway, I should go. I'm flying back to New York in a few days. Maybe I'll see you when you get back to the States." They drifted back to the door, and Rachel stopped at the threshold. "Do you still miss her?"

"Every day," Santana said, and then she answered the second, unspoken question. "There's no magic. It just takes time."

She closed the door and stood motionless before it, and allowed seconds to stretch into minutes. Then she took a deep breath and came back and sat down on her futon and Britt could tell by the tilt of her head that her neck and shoulders were tight with tension.

Britt spoke first. "That was Rachel Berry."

"In the flesh."

"Are you all right?"

"No." Her eyes were slick and glassy, like oil on the surface of a roadway after a hard rain. Old grief welling up.

Britt shifted her good arm, creating an opening, and Santana slid inside and lay half on top of her. She rested her cheek on Britt's chest. She felt small and fragile, so different from her usual easy confidence. The enemy that had wounded her was not the kind that Britt knew how to protect someone from, but she could hold Santana in the circle of her arm, and stroke her hair, and hum tuneless snippets of songs she dug up from her childhood memories, until Santana's frantic heartbeat slowed and her breathing was even and the places wet with tears on the fabric of Britt's borrowed shirt began to dry.

She didn't ask. If Santana wanted her to know, she would tell it in her own time. It was enough for Santana to feel safe in her arms. She didn't dare hope for more.

.x.

Britt called Otter that afternoon and asked her to relay a message. She'd been successful, but the delivery would be delayed. She'd need a few days. All she needed was a few more days.

.x.

She stood in front of the dojo and watched them rise from the earth like the morning mist over the fields.

There were so many of them, men and women, youthful and elderly, and their numbers grew every time they visited. They stood before her in a great host, watching her in silence, and she did what she'd always done since the first visit, when it was just the man from the luxury suite in the Park Hyatt hotel: she let herself drain away until she turned to stone, until she felt nothing, because it was the only way she could withstand the strength of their silence.

They were the yūrei, spirits trapped in this world, bound to her and unable to rest until justice was done. They watched, and they waited, and they were patient because they knew that no one lives forever. But this visit was different. They were restless. Agitated. The front ranks stepped aside, parting like water in a diverted stream as a figure dressed in white approached her. It was a woman. One with long, black hair. _No._ Black eyes stark against bloodless skin. Dark, searching eyes. _No._

She began to crumble.

.x.

She jerked awake in panic, her heart pounding, dizzy with confusion.

Santana held her close. "It was a dream."

"Yes," she said thickly. The panic made her agreeable.

"It's all right. You're here now. With me."

With Santana. "You're alive."

"I'm alive."

She breathed in Santana's scent, alive scent, sunlight on wood and the faint trace of citrus. It blew the doors off the suffocating space that entrapped her.

"Tell me."

"I don't—" She almost said "remember" but that would have been a lie. "They visit me. Yūrei."

"Yūrei?" Santana hesitated over the unfamiliar word.

"Ghosts."

"What do they do?"

"They watch."

Santana shifted and sat up, and Britt followed, pushing herself upright so they faced each other. Santana brushed a stray lock of hair out of Britt's eyes and said, "How many are there?"

Britt knew the number immediately. She knew the number even though there were so many that their names and faces and details all ran together, like vibrant colors of paint mixing into sickly grey. It was so big that she couldn't bear to look at Santana when she thought of it.

Santana's fingers stilled against her cheek, pinning her to the question. "How many are there, Britt?"

Once she said it there was no going back. Whatever this was between them, whatever feelings Santana had, would end as soon as she spoke the number out loud. But it was the truth, and Santana was asking, and Britt couldn't deny what Santana wanted, so she forced herself to look into Santana's eyes and said, "Three hundred and seventeen."

There were so many things Santana could have done. She could have recoiled in disgust, pulled her hand away as if she'd touched something rotten, or shouted curses, and Britt wouldn't have minded if she had. But she didn't. She simply sat, calm and still, for several seconds, and then she said, "For how long?"

"I'm twenty-eight."

Santana dropped her hands into her lap. "You've been doing this for fifteen years?"

Britt nodded. Living it had seemed much longer.

"How many of them were innocent?"

_All of them._ But she answered the question as Santana intended it: a reckoning of innocent bystanders. "Three. None were accidental." She didn't make mistakes.

"I should have been number four."

"Yes."

"I keep trying to add you up but it doesn't come out right. Why do you do this? You don't enjoy killing. You're not driven by the money. You don't seem to be in it for the power."

"Because I don't want to die." Because she wanted to live so desperately that she'd stood in the cold marble bathroom of a luxury suite and decided she was willing to end someone else's life to preserve her own, and once there was blood on her hands, there was nothing she could do but push forward knowing she was a coward too selfish to die.

"There has to be a way out."

"All paths end in my death."

"Find the one that takes the longest to get there." She made it sound possible. _I don't believe in hopelessness._

This time, nothing stopped Britt from reaching out, from twining her fingers in the hair behind Santana's head and pulling her close so their foreheads touched. "How long are you in Japan?"

"Two more months."

No amount of time would have been the right answer. "Give me your two months. Give me that."

"Then what?" Santana's eyes glinted.

"Then you'll return home and write a book about me."

She let out a choked laugh and wiped her eyes. "That's not good enough."

"It has to be."

She pulled back, scrutinized Britt at arm's length, and made her choice. "All right. But I have a request."

"What is it?"

"I have the week after next free. I want you to spend it with me. The whole week. No running off."

That was something Britt could do. "I'd like that."

A few days. A week. Two months. It wasn't nearly enough.


	7. Seven

Is it because you always hope, my heart,  
that I always light a lamp  
in the orange twilight?  
— Yosano Akiko (1878-1942)

It took a surprising amount of effort for Britt to convince Santana that she was well enough to leave the ryokan. Her first attempt appealed to Santana's professional obligations, an angle that quickly proved ineffective. The second, a demonstration of fitness in which she walked around the room pretending that the pain in her ribs didn't exist, only served to intensify Santana's resistance. Santana was glorious when she was stubborn, her eyes hot and her shoulders square, even though both of them knew that the only thing keeping Britt in the room was Britt herself.

She earned Santana's approval only after agreeing to see a doctor when she returned to Hachiōji, and she found it odd that of all things, that one ended up being the winning bargaining chip.

She packed away her gear, the bloody clothes, all of the evidence she'd taken from the scene and the information she'd been sent to retrieve, and stood in the middle of the room wearing her own jeans, dark fabric hiding the dried splatters of her blood, and a blue sweatshirt of Santana's with UC IRVINE printed in block letters across the chest.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say you looked like a grad student," Santana said after Britt shouldered the pack.

"What would I study?"

Santana thought for a moment. "Engineering. Mechanical, maybe, or industrial. But I don't think you'd be satisfied with sitting around and thinking. I see you in the metal shop. Or out on the job site." She reached out and took Britt's hand and traced lines down her fingers. "These hands were made for building."

Or its mirror image, destruction. But the understanding within Santana's observation was too big to be pushed aside by such thoughts. Instead, she smiled and said, "Thank you. For everything."

"You can thank me by coming back tomorrow."

How could words make her heart leap to such heights? "I can return in the afternoon."

Santana leaned close and kissed her on the cheek. "Until then."

Britt walked to Kasuga Station as sparrows chittered and fought among the electrical wires strung overhead. The wire lines slashed black cuts against the morning clouds that covered the sky with grey. The cloud cover kept the temperature down, but summer's humidity clung to her skin and she was sweating by the time she descended the stairs into the subway.

The station was crowded and buzzed with conversation and activity, and the sudden press of people and the glare of lights and the clang of noise was jarring after four days in the quiet sanctuary of Santana's room. It was late enough that she'd missed the worst of the crushing humanity of rush hour, when salarymen and women in dark suits and starched shirts, white-gloved subway attendants, students dressed for school, laborers on their way to work at the construction site or repairing vending machines or taking tickets at the toll booth, came together at the same time, their different uniforms blending into one.

She pressed her back against a concrete pillar covered in warning signs — "Watch Your Step", "Don't Rush Onto The Train" — and took inventory. Her arm was sore from shoulder to elbow and moving her wrist and fingers pulled painfully at the skin and muscles around the healing cut. But the numbness had gone away, and with time the cut would scar and become another reminder of how her life was a game ruled by fractions of a second. Her ribs were another matter. Breathing no longer came easy, and her body's attempts to compensate left her lightheaded. The alternative was painkillers, but she hated how they made her feel, how they dulled her edges and brought all her vulnerabilities to the surface like a shark on a line.

The train arrived with the sound of clattering wheels and a subtle shift in pressure as the air displaced by two hundred thousand kilos of railcar rushed into the blast shafts of the ventilation system. Okubo awaited. Okubo, an outpost of a life that for the past four days didn't exist.

She got on the train.

.x.

The first thing she did upon reaching the safehouse was strip out of her clothes, lingering over the smell of citrus and sunlight as she set Santana's sweatshirt aside, letting it buoy her as she did the slow and tedious work of cleaning, first herself, and then, dressed in a loose t-shirt and trousers and her hair still wet, her gear. Everything else that had blood on it — her clothes, her assailants' knives — had to be disposed of. She bundled all of it into plastic bags and packed it inside the duffel. She'd take care of it later, in Hachiōji.

Once her duffel was packed and ready, she had one remaining task that led her several blocks away, to a nondescript alley between a video store and a noodle shop. It dead-ended at a rusty door, and she pounded the door once, a second time, then turned the handle and let herself inside.

The interior was dim and cramped and filled with the dingy fog produced by the chain-smoking Zainichi Korean who sat hunched over the workbench in the middle of the room. He looked up at her through his watchmaker's loupe and grunted.

"I need an E2 and a SIM," she said without preamble. She didn't need one. She'd done business here before, and if she hadn't she'd be speaking into the barrel of the snub nosed revolver he kept under the bench.

He grunted again and set the loupe down on the benchtop, then stood up with effort and shuffled over to a cabinet filled with drawers, opened one and rummaged around inside until he pulled out a flat black candy-bar style cell phone. A second drawer produced a SIM card. He slid both across the table and squinted at her expectantly.

She pulled twenty 10,000 Yen notes out of her pocket, set them down next to the phone, and waited for the money to disappear before collecting the phone and the card and pocketing both. There was no need for a preamble and no need for a goodbye.

A vending machine around the corner sold prepaid SIM cards, and she bought one and loaded it and the encrypted SIM into the phone before walking back to the safehouse. She dialed her phone number on the new phone, answered the call on her own phone when it buzzed, and let the encryption run through its handshake before hanging up. Then she saved her number in the new phone's contacts, and when it came time to enter a label she punched in the letter 'B'. Simple and to the point.

An hour later she was on the train back to the dojo, the phone and Santana's sweatshirt left far behind to wait for her to come back to herself.

.x.

If Master Kazuo was displeased by the delay of her delivery he didn't show it. His eyes lingered on her right hand as he accepted the flash drive and the envelope containing the papers. He was too perceptive for the stiffness in her movements to go unnoticed.

"Two Tiger clan soldiers were there before me. There was an altercation."

"The soldiers?"

"Dead."

"This client appears to have a rival with plans of their own."

"Indeed."

"Where did you go after you retrieved what you came for?"

Britt had years to practice lying, to keep muscles and heartbeat in check, to keep her gaze even, to believe the lie so completely that it became the truth. But she'd never lied to her master until now. "Back to Okubo."

He accepted her answer with a nod of his head. "You should visit Goseki-sensei."

"I will, Master."

It was only after she went out to the garden alone that her guts uncoiled. She watched the grasses sway in the breeze and cleared her mind of all traces of Santana. She had to believe the lie, at least until tomorrow. It was the only way for them to be safe.

.x.

Doctor Goseki had run the medical clinic at the top of the mountain as long as Britt remembered, first serving the silkworm farmers who lived in the surrounding hills until the silk industry gave way to bedroom enclaves filled with workers from Tokyo. He was ageless in the way of the great masters, for whom time seemed to stand still once they'd reached the pinnacle of their skills.

He was also one of the few people alive who knew her secret, for as good as she was at lying, it would have been impossible to explain away the random cuts, the stab wounds, and once, on a particularly bad night several years ago, the gunshot wound to her thigh that almost killed her. It didn't, thanks to an arrangement the two masters had made long ago: the doctor's services in exchange for sizable donations to various children's medical charities of his choosing. A tiny amount of good paid for in blood.

They never told him any details, but it wasn't difficult to take the injuries they presented plus the significant sums of money they had access to and figure out the nature of their business. Despite this, he had always been kind to her, and even now he warmed the face of his stethoscope in the cup of his palm before pressing it against her chest. "Breathe," he said, nodding to himself and moving the diaphragm carefully over the blue-turned-purple bruise that stretched from her hipbone to breast. He pulled the earpieces of the scope away from his ears and said, "Two cracked ribs. But I suspect you knew that already."

She nodded.

"Does the pain keep you awake at night?"

"Not if I take something."

"Then continue doing that. You need the rest. And tell your master no—" he searched for an appropriate euphemism, "work for at least four, no, six weeks." He always added an extra amount at the end because he knew Master Kazuo would push her back early otherwise. Another kindness. He'd done this for over twenty years and she knew nothing about him.

"Let me see your arm." She turned so he could examine the white strips of tape that held her skin together. He touched a fingertip against one of the strips. "Whoever did this did a fine job," he said, knowing that she couldn't have done it herself.

She fought the smile away, redirected it into a nod, and then another question entirely. "Why do you help us?"

He seemed surprised. "A wound that bleeds does so regardless of the cause."

"But you know what I do."

"I know what you do." And he helped them anyway. Is that what Santana had done? Had she weighed her conscience against a force of death and found something there worth saving?

Britt pulled her shirt over her head and bowed deeply. "Thank you," she said, and like all the other _thank you_s she'd said over the past few weeks it didn't seem adequate at all.

.x.

Britt returned to Santana on Saturday afternoon, and she emerged from the artificial climate of the subway station into a midsummer's deluge that left her soaked through and trailing drops of rain from her hair and from her clothes.

As soon as she stepped through the door, Santana grabbed her by the hand and led her across the room to the side that faced the garden. The sliding door was wide open, and fat, monsoon raindrops streamed from the overhanging eaves, a liquid curtain that separated them from the garden world beyond, where water reflected grey skies and every leaf and branch seemed greener and more mysterious. Santana was vibrant against the greys and greens. "Isn't it beautiful?" she said.

It was. It had been designed to exist in harmony with the elements, sunlight and rain, snow and fog. Someone had contemplated the possibilities before crafting a poem for the eyes that changed meaning depending on what time it was read, ever beautiful, even to those who had brought the elements inside with them.

Santana finally noticed the state Britt was in. "You're soaked. And I'm making you stare at some garden," she said, flying into motion to cover her embarrassment. "Take that shirt off and let me get you a dry one." She slid the door closed.

Britt thoughtlessly peeled off the wet layers, but as soon as Santana's eyes touched her skin she wanted to turn away, to hide from the history written there and from the inevitable questions. Santana held out a shirt and Britt stuck her arms through it and drew it over her head in a rush, tugging the fabric down over her bra until she was stopped by Santana's hand.

"Did you see a doctor?"

"I did."

"And?"

"Cracked ribs and the order to rest for six weeks. And a compliment for the person who taped up my cut."

"I'll thank my instructor back home," Santana said dryly, and she peered at the bruise that covered Britt's ribs. The center was already beginning to fade into yellow, the body healing, old blood absorbed to make way for new repairs. She always healed quickly.

She felt Santana's gaze lingering upon her as she snugged the shirt down the rest of the way.

"My clothes look good on you. I'm kinda jealous."

Britt flushed and smoothed the fabric down over her stomach unconsciously, over the fluttering she suddenly felt there. She cleared her throat and changed the subject. "What would you like to do this afternoon?"

"Considering the weather and doctor's orders, I think I want to stay in. Unless you'd rather play tour guide in the rain."

"Let's stay," Britt said, but there could have been a typhoon outside and it wouldn't have mattered to her as long as Santana was there.

"Then I want to keep looking at this garden." She pushed the shōji back open and sat down under the eaves with the raindrop curtain before her, her eyes open but unseeing. Britt knew that look well, the look of a traveler walking the paths inside to places no one else could follow. Santana's lips began to move, at first silently, then with a low murmur too faint for Britt to decipher, and it occurred to her that Santana's travels were unlike her own, that instead of treading deeper within, Santana was bringing herself to the surface. Britt watched her, fascinated by the process in which she created worlds, until Santana breathed deeply and blinked back into awareness.

"You were writing."

Santana grinned and nodded her head. "I was."

"A poem?"

"Maybe." She sounded like she shouldn't have been. "But don't tell my editor. I'm supposed to be writing a book."

Britt plastered on a serious expression. "Your secret is safe," she said solemnly.

Santana laughed. "I appreciate it," she said, and she looked at Britt with want. "You're really far away. Scoot over here." She leaned back against the door jamb and opened her arms and Britt came to her, and it didn't matter if Britt was taller and had several inches more reach, Santana always seemed to surround her completely. The seconds stretched into minutes stretched into the sound of Santana's heart and the rush of breath through her lungs, and Britt felt content in a way she never had before, filled with a quiet as deep as the marrow within her bones.

A part of her marveled at how easy it was to lay there, to doze off to the patter of raindrops against the clay tiles on the roof, to meditate on the feeling of Santana's cheek resting against her hair and Santana's fingers circling patterns around her knuckles.

A part of her didn't marvel at all. It had been waiting a long time, latent and neglected, but never disappearing completely, not even when the pressure of forces outside herself compressed it into something small and unrecognizable, a raw gemstone in the darkness waiting for someone to pick it up and bring it to the surface. But that was exactly what Santana had done, against such long odds, and the realization of what Santana had unearthed was shocking. Britt sat up.

"What's wrong?"

She turned to Santana. Reached out with both hands and cupped Santana's face. Searched those dark, beautiful, worried eyes.

"Britt?"

It was far beyond her to say it. She was unworthy to say it and would never be worthy enough. But she could show it through action, and it would be better that way, for Santana to see the benefits of what she'd uncovered but not know the depths of the feelings behind them.

Britt leaned forward and pressed her lips against ones stiff with surprise, until Santana relaxed and let her in, let her speak in a way that left words behind. And she had much to say, and did, stopping only when the ache in her ribs had become unbearable and Santana's breath shuddered into gasps.

Santana's look of stunned surprise gave way to one of delight. "Wow. Where did that come from?"

_From you._

.x.

She gave the phone to Santana later, after they'd spent hours talking, and napping, and talking, hardly a moment where they didn't touch. Santana talked of growing up in Ohio in a town small enough that you'd see the same set of classmates year after year, all the way to graduation, when everyone who could escape scattered into the world and didn't look back.

Britt spoke of summers spent exploring the mountains that surrounded the dojo, how her training began with games like hide-and-seek, and footraces along the paths that wound up and down the hills, and play-acting roles, at first fanciful, heroic samurai and river spirits and beautiful princesses, and later mundane, police officers, waitresses, flight attendants, and how it was only later that she discovered what it had all been for.

When the conversation came to a lull, she sat up and dug the phone out of her pocket and regarded it in the palm of her hand. "This is a secure cell phone. It will automatically encrypt calls made to other phones like it."

Santana eyed it warily. "Like yours."

"Yes. You can also dial any other number for an unsecured call." She held it out. "You can call me at any time. For any reason."

Santana took the phone. Her fingertips were cool against Britt's skin. "This is the first time I've gotten a phone along with someone's number."

"It's the safest way for you to contact me."

She accessed the phone's contacts list. "'B', huh? I was kind of hoping your name would get longer instead of shorter."

It took Britt a moment to figure out what she meant. That she'd given Santana so little personal information to go on. Not even her name. "Brittany."

"Brittany." It was odd hearing it spoken correctly, the way Santana compressed it into two syllables instead of three like a native Japanese speaker would. "I guessed as much, but I wanted to hear it from you." She looked at Britt curiously. "Do you have a preference?"

"'Brittany' belongs to another life."

"Tell me how it got that way."

"It's a long story."

"It's still raining." A good, Japanese answer.

Britt lay down so her head was pillowed against Santana's thigh. "People take their names for granted. I don't even know mine. I think my given name is Brittany. I think my birth date is September 14, 1984. But I don't know for certain, and the only people who do are dead. What I do know is that I ended up in an orphanage, and that's where my master found me."

"Your master?"

Britt nodded. "Hattori Kazuo, one of the last remaining masters of the Iga-ryū school of ninjutsu."

"So you really are a ninja. Not just an assassin."

"Shinobi — what Westerners call ninja — began as spies and saboteurs. We've existed for thousands of years, and we've survived because we blend in and don't bring attention to ourselves. My master is a descendant of that lineage."

Santana lifted a lock of Britt's hair, dark blonde strands twined around her fingers, and brushed it against the tip of Britt's nose. "You'll have to forgive me for thinking that you don't exactly blend in here."

"That's why I have a passport. And why my master chose me."

"So he could expand his reach outside of Japan."

"Exactly. It was a survival measure. Even the Yakuza are expanding into the U.S. Into Australia. South America. The Iga clans used to have hundreds, even thousands of shinobi, but there's far less demand now."

"I can't say I'm too torn up about that."

"It's for the better, yes."

"So you have a passport. And you've used it."

"On almost every continent."

"And in the U.S.?"

Britt smiled humorlessly. "Many times. Even in California. Los Angeles. Santa Monica. San Francisco."

"What happens if you say no?"

"No?"

"No. As in, 'No, I won't do this anymore?'"

"My master will attempt to kill me."

"And if he fails?"

"Every Iga-trained shinobi will try to finish what he started. One of them would likely succeed."

"But I know what you can do. I've seen it. I've seen the decisions you can make in an instant. You can figure out another way."

The only thing that could make her turn from her master was Santana, and no amount of belief could change the fact that Santana was also her biggest weakness. "If I were to run, the Iga wouldn't hesitate to kill you if it meant getting to me." She let the words hang before continuing. "And I will not give them cause to consider you a target."

Santana stood up, anger flaming hot behind her eyes. "So that's what I'm supposed to do? Hide out with you for two months and then walk away?"

It had been unfair of her to ask that of Santana, and Britt knew it. She climbed to her feet and faced the consequences.

"Walk away and watch you go back to a life you don't want? I don't think I can do that. Not anymore."

Parts of Britt screamed out for her to fight, to find a way, to keep Santana's belief from going to waste. But they were selfish, those parts of her that insisted she could have it both ways: that she could have a small part of Santana and keep her safe at the same time. Only one of those things was within reach, and if given the choice a thousand times she'd pick the same one. "Then I won't ask you to."

Santana stepped back. "I'm sorry." Her voice was ragged. "I know I said I could."

Britt pulled on a smile. A uniform. Her shield. "It wasn't meant to be in this lifetime." She forced herself to look into Santana's eyes and hated herself for the anguish she saw there. "If you ever need anything, call." Then she bent down and kissed Santana on the cheek, tasting moisture and salt. "You've changed me more than you know," she said, and where once her heart would have sunk into nothing, this time it fractured into shards that drove themselves into her lungs, into her bones, into her blood, until every part of her knew the pain of walking away from the thing she wanted most.

.x.

Britt could divide her life into two parts: before Santana, and after; and life after Santana moved slowly, lengthening like waves from the wake from a passing boat. Eventually, the ripples of the interruption would fade away, but until that time came, the part of herself that faced outward went through the motions of living while the rest of her grieved the love and hope that had been trapped by a spring frost before they had a chance to bloom.

She passed the days in Hachiōji, ignoring Doctor Goseki's advice to rest and doing chores around the dojo grounds until her ribs creaked and the pain became unbearable. Her beloved katas were off-limits, denied to her on her master's orders, so she dug out an exercise from long ago and filled a bucket with ice-cold water, plunging her hands inside up to her elbows, opening and closing her fingers until her forearms burned like an inferno and she could feel every muscle in her hands individually.

Nights she spent in the city, wandering the wards, getting lost in the crush of millions of souls. She watched the people around her and the swirling currents of emotions that lay beneath their carefully crafted façades. She avoided Bunykō and Roppongi, and all the places where Americans gathered in numbers.

Once she sat in a tea house and imagined killing every person in the place. Once she pulled a tiny sheaf of poems out from their hiding spot under the safehouse floor and re-read them over and over. Once she thought about making a phone call and saying, "I'll do it. I'll run if you'll go with me, and I'll protect you and keep you safe," like a scene from a bad television drama.

She did each of these things only once, casting them away like stones into the ocean.

She was walking away from Shinjuku station on the eighth day after Santana when her phone buzzed and she answered without looking. "Hai."

"I'd like to see you. If you'll let me."

.x.

They met at a busy cafe a few blocks away from Shibuya Crossing, orbiting each other carefully as Britt chose a table and pulled out a chair for Santana to sit.

The server's arrival saved them from an awkward silence. Santana ordered coffee. "Tea, please," Britt said, "and a glass of water."

Their drinks arrived with swift efficiency, and Santana played with her coffee cup, slowly spinning it in its saucer. "You don't need to say anything. Just listen."

Britt looked at Santana and hoped her face didn't show how hard her heart was pounding inside her chest.

"I want to apologize. I did a lot of thinking, and I realized that what I asked you was unreasonable. Because I haven't given you a damn thing."

"Yes you—"

"Hear me out. Please." She looked so determined. "I had no right to ask you to make a decision like that." She took a sip, then another. "Oh, of course you would know where the good coffee was around here." The humor was her confidence coming back, the earth once again spinning around its axis, balance being restored. "Britt, I'm sorry."

"You don't have to apologize."

She squinted into a tight smile. "Yes, I do. I once made a promise that I wouldn't be afraid of the things I wanted, and sometimes that's a hard promise to keep." She reached across the table and touched Britt's hand. "If two months is all we've got, then I'd like to make it count. If that's still what you want."

_Yes, yes, yes,_ but Britt had to make sure. "Every moment you spend with me puts you in danger."

"I know. I don't care." Her voice and gaze were steady, and she was either saying the truth or she believed it enough to make it so. "And this is just as dangerous for you as it is for me."

She was right, and having agency meant taking responsibility for the risks and considering all the options. There was never a reward without risk. Britt covered Santana's hand with her own. "Isn't this your week off?"

Santana smiled tentatively. "Yeah."

"Then I'm yours."

.x.

Santana wanted to see the real Tokyo, the one that existed outside the glossy pages of tourist brochures and travel magazines, and that meant going where the people were, a journey that began on the sidewalk right outside the cafe. Britt plunged into the weekend crowds, moving through with ease as Santana tried gamely to follow.

Santana stopped her at the next corner. "How do you _do_ that? It's like you're parting the waves."

Britt tilted her head, unsure of the question.

"Walk the crowd. I either bump into everyone or they hold me up."

How best to explain a skill that didn't require any thought? She reached out with her left hand and pulled Santana close, so their hips touched, and she kept her hand at the small of Santana's back and leaned in and said into her ear, "Walk with me."

They swept into the rapids of the crowd. "Watch the people around us." Santana immediately looked up at the surrounding faces, like most would. "Now watch their feet." When walking, people indicate their general direction with their head and shoulders, but it's their feet that give everything away, their direction and speed, their intentions. "They'll tell you where to go."

Santana hesitated, but Britt guided her through the paths that opened and closed before them.

"Project your importance." Santana straightened her spine and lifted her jaw a fraction, subtle changes that said _Move out of my way_. Britt leaned close again and deadpanned, "You're on a very, very important mission," and Santana's laughter rumbled all the way up her arm.

The scramble crossing loomed up ahead with its bright lights and enormous video advertisements competing for the eyeballs of thousands of people as they converged on one intersection. She slowed, smiled as Santana matched her step for step in a dance that was less about following and leading and more about being attuned to the person beside you. They reached the expansive diagonal crosswalk a second after the crosslight turned green, their timing perfect, and they flowed into the throng as it swept across the street.

Two of them in a crowd that came at them from every direction. Two among thousands. But in the bubble of their connection, hand to back to hips, they could have been the only ones on the street. They stopped in front of the statue of Hachikō, and looked at each other. Britt tucked a lock of Santana's hair back behind her ear. Santana grabbed a fistful of Britt's shirt and kissed her. And the population of the world became two.


	8. Eight

Who knows  
that in the depth of the ravine  
of the mountain of my hidden heart  
a firefly of my love is aflame.  
— Abutsu-Ni (1209-1283)

If time without Santana moved slowly, then time with Santana threatened to disappear in a blur of days filled with movement and activity, days that dissolved into nights that shimmered back into days. Santana quickly proved herself an able traveler, and her curiosity and fearlessness made it easy for Britt to enjoy playing the part of the tour guide.

Santana's pursuit of Tokyo began with the cliché: the enormous electronics emporiums of Akihabara, large as city blocks and several stories high; the tribes of teenage zoku dressed to perfection that loitered along the streets of Harajuku; the pachinko parlors that attempted to drown everything around them in gaudy neon and flashing lights.

She dragged Britt into one such example, a noisy monstrosity containing rows of identical lime green pachinko machines surrounded by walls painted a similarly eye-melting color. The color scheme seemed an attempt to combat the dulling effect of the cigarette smoke that filled the room. The noise, colors, and narrow rows between the machines made the place feel oppressive, and Britt's shoulders and neck tightened as she followed closely behind Santana, who picked a machine seemingly at random and flopped down into the chair in front of it.

They were surrounded by men who wore the grim expressions of those who had handed their lives over to chance. A parlor attendant moved silently up and down the aisles, clearing away crumpled cigarette wrappers and empty drink bottles, and if not for the clean-up service, the players would have been sitting in the accumulation of their own trash. Their worlds had narrowed to the twenty by ten centimeter video screens before them.

Santana glanced around the room and said, "This is serious business."

"For some, it's how they make their living."

"Well, I'm sure I'll be contributing to someone's living," she said as she fed a couple thousand Yen into the machine. "Want to show me how this works?"

It worked much like a slot machine, but with small steel ball bearings that served as a randomizing element as they fell through a field of pins, eventually ending up at a series of gates in the bottom tray. Lucky bounces through certain gates triggered spins of the slots on the video screen, and even luckier spins resulted in jackpots paid out in additional ball bearings. A bucketful of ball bearings would earn a substantial prize at the booth at the front of the parlor, but to Britt, a handful was all she needed to sweep the feet out from under someone, or take them down for the count.

The sound of a jackpot bell snapped Britt away from the image of shotgunning someone with a faceful of pachinko balls. Santana's machine was lit like a summer festival as the payout poured into the collection bucket.

"It's about time," Santana said, as if pachinko jackpots were a regular occurrence in her life.

"Shoot again."

Santana did, and the ball bounced through the center gate, triggering a spin that ended up in another jackpot, followed by another, and another.

"Fever mode," Britt said, and at Santana's look of confusion added, "These machines are set to go on jackpot streaks every once in a while."

"Lucky me," Santana said, and as the jackpots continued, her cackles of victory drew reproachful glances from the hardcore gamblers slouched beside them. Britt recognized herself in their discomfort, how they didn't even know they were caught within the small boxes of their lives. Santana had shaken her up and forced her to see how deeply she was trapped.

Some time later they tumbled out of the parlor, and Santana's laughter bounced warm against the concrete as her hands juggled a pile of Hello Kitty figurines encased in small slabs of plastic. She concocted a string of ideas of what she'd do with her hard-won prizes — send them to unsuspecting friends back home, display them in a shrine to cute things — until Britt finally informed her that she could sell them back for real money.

"You mean some Hello Kitty fanatic is going to pay cash for these things?"

"Not quite. They're a means of circumventing the law against gambling. Shops like the one over there"— she nodded down the block at a plain looking storefront that was little more than a cashier's window —"will buy them back in exchange."

"My explanation makes for a better story." Santana's eyes twinkled in the glow of neon that washed the night sky acid green.

"Yes. But if it's story you're after, I'd rather see you implement your shrine idea."

"And turn into the crazy Hello Kitty lady?" She grinned and lifted her hands so the plastic clacked together. "I'm too greedy to let this opportunity by. Lead the way so I can cash out and buy us some drinks."

.x.

The bar was tiny, barely big enough to hold a counter and six stools, three of which were already taken. But it had a reputation for strong drinks and an owner who was perfectly willing to cook them tamagoyaki omelets at two o'clock in the morning, and when Santana sat down beside the trendy-looking trio of artists at the bar, the conversation grew to envelop them in a mix of Japanese and English, with the kind of intimacy among strangers that could only come from a place that was so well-hidden that to discover it granted you membership in an exclusive club.

Britt's seat was the farthest inside, and she sat with her back to the wall, facing Santana and the artists and the front door. She watched Santana's interactions from the edges of the conversation, the way Santana slipped easily into the flow, demonstrating her social fluency by knowing exactly how much to tease the shy one to get him to blush from the attention without making him feel singled out, how much to play along with the cocky one's proclamations before bringing him back to earth with a well-executed verbal jab. But as much as Santana was interested in the conversation in front of her, she kept coming back to Britt, checking in with looks, and the occasional question, and then by resting her hand on Britt's leg.

It was like Santana had tied a rope around her thigh, the pressure constant and unforgettable, the friction creating heat that sank into her blood, warming her skin and her muscles with every pump of her heart. She took a sip of her beer, hoping it would cool her down, but it only intensified the burning line that ran from Santana's hand to a point below her navel, a fire that hollowed out the last bastions of her control.

If Santana knew what she was doing to Britt, she was too busy to let it on. The conversation was winding down, and the artists were in the middle of inviting her to their modern calligraphy exhibition at the Mori Art Museum, and there would be an after-party on Friday night, and it was going to be a wild time, and they would love to see her and her quiet friend there. Santana smiled and confirmed the place and time, a gesture which earned her adoring looks from the artistic trio, and said, "I don't know what we've got planned for that night but we'll stop by if we're in the neighborhood." And then she yawned, and used her hand on Britt's thigh for leverage as she stood up from her barstool, a hand that slipped down a second later, far enough to make Britt's leg muscles tighten into a knot, a slip accompanied by a look that wasn't innocent at all.

Yes, Santana knew exactly what she was doing.

.x.

Britt knew how to kill with her bare hands, how to set a fire that would burn a target clean and hot, how to turn lust, or sex, or even love, into weapons. But as they sat in the taxi that took them back to the ryokan, she burned with the fevered heat of wanting Santana and shook with the chills of her own nervous fears, and none of her skills could stop these feelings from injecting themselves into every cell inside her like an infection.

She sat still, saying nothing, and looked out the window at the city lights flickering in distorted kaleidoscope colors. She knew Santana was watching, felt her trying to gauge the sudden distance between them, sensed her furrowed brow and the slight slump of her shoulders.

She turned to Santana, despite neck muscles rigid with tension and her cowardly heart, and said, "Thanks for the drink." A weak smokescreen.

Santana saw right through it. "Are you okay?"

"I don't know."

The taxi released them at the inn, and they crept quietly down the hallways to Santana's room, and as Santana went off to change, Britt rolled out the futon — just the one, because they'd started out with two separately, then two pushed together, but found that it was inevitable that they'd both end up in the same one over the course of the night, as if they were seeking each other out within the world of dreams.

A short time later she lay on her back, acutely aware of Santana propped on her side, watching her through the shadows.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"I don't want to do anything you're not ready for."

Britt was suddenly grateful for the darkness.

"You tell me if I push too far, okay?" Santana's fingers searched out Britt's own. "Tell me."

Britt squeezed Santana's hand gently. "I will," she said, and she couldn't stop herself from pulling Santana closer. All the places where their skin touched became anchors for her nerves, pulling them tight until the chills went away, and all that was left of her simmered with Santana, Santana, Santana.

.x.

Their mornings had begun with Britt asking some variation of the question "What would you like to see today?", but this was a morning of sleeping in and moving slowly, and neither of them was in a hurry to disentangle herself from the other. It was almost noon before they began the day, and when it was time to pick a place to go, Britt didn't ask her usual question, instead starting out with a suggestion of her own. "I was thinking we could spend some time in Jinbōchō." She didn't know why she hadn't thought of it sooner.

"What's there?"

"Something I think you'll like."

It was only a five minute subway ride away, and from their vantage point at the top of the train station steps, it seemed a neighborhood like any other in Tokyo: high-rise buildings and wide avenues surrounded by a tangle of small side streets.

They turned the corner and walked down one of the brick-paved streets, its sidewalks edged with short grey bollards, like a line of miniature soldiers standing at attention, in place of a proper curb. Above their heads, blue and pink lanterns hung from lines strung between the streetlights. The lanterns swayed in the fickle afternoon breeze.

"What's that?" Britt asked as they passed a storefront.

Santana peered through the myriad of hand-lettered signs that obscured the store's windows. "A bookstore."

They continued up the street. "And that?"

"Another bookstore. And now another." Santana stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. "Wait. Where are we again?"

"Book Town."

"Book Town?"

Britt nodded, grinning as Santana brightened like a morning glory struck by the first light of dawn.

"Where should we go first?"

"How about this one?" Britt placed her hand on Santana's back and turned her in the direction of a shop whose signage was a mix of Japanese and English.

The bookstore was larger inside than it seemed from the street, and its clientele was a mix of younger Japanese and middle aged expats. One of the latter, a portly man with salt-and-pepper hair, glanced up from the shelves with that hungry minority look in his eyes, that of finding long-lost kin. He'd probably been in country less than a year, not nearly long enough to outgrow the constant shock of being surrounded by millions of people who looked identically different.

Santana wandered among the shelves and low display tables, following the English signage to the lonely reaches at the back of the store. Britt trailed several paces away, to force herself from hovering, but it meant that she couldn't read the titles of the books Santana touched with reverence, the ones she lingered over, flipping through their pages as if she were greeting old friends.

Britt looked at the table of books in front of her. A flash of blue diverted her eye to a book with a picture of the Earth and the symbol for an atom and the word "Universe" printed prominently in bold white lettering on its cover. She picked it up, opened it, and found pages of small print and distressingly long words.

Santana appeared over her shoulder. "Find something you like?"

She snapped the book closed and was about to return it to the table when Santana's hand stopped her.

"'The Universe that Discovered Itself'. Very nice. You should get it."

Britt couldn't stop the flush from crawling up her neck. "It would be wasted on me."

Santana glanced from the book, to Britt, to the book again. "Can you read English?"

"Not well."

"Yet you speak it perfectly."

"I went to the American School in Japan until I was thirteen."

"I didn't know there was such a thing."

"It's a school for the children of expats. All of the classes are taught in English." The curriculum itself was an afterthought; the real value was in her classmates and in the ways they spoke, the heritage of the places they called home living in their mouths. And when her teachers handed her yet another low grade, it was because she'd spent the previous night learning fifty ways to cripple someone with a palm strike and practicing hours of katas instead of doing homework.

Her poor marks led to the assumption she was stupid, but it was safer to let them believe that was the truth, even if it meant living the lie for so long that she'd started to believe it herself.

And once she left school, after her first kill because it was impossible to keep up the charade any longer, she'd scratched out an education by reading as much as she could in the few moments of downtime she was allowed. It was nothing in comparison to Santana and her years of schooling.

"And you started early enough to pick it up without an accent."

"Mostly, but it was also a baseline for additional training."

"What do you mean?"

"You have a Midland American accent, with shades of California English, so to you I speak Standard American English. But if you were from Boston"— she shifted seamlessly into a Northeastern accent, broadening her As and dropping her Rs —"I woulda stah'ted speaking to you like this."

"And if I were from London?"

"England? I would speak to you in BBC English, of course," her voice haughty with privilege. "Or per'aps in Scouse if I was feeling cheeky," as if she'd stepped straight off the Liverpool docks.

"You became what was most familiar to me."

Britt nodded. "I'm glad you're from the Midwest. Standard requires the least amount of effort."

"What else is part of your uniform when you're with me?"

Britt shifted back on her heels. "I—" She remembered the afternoon at the Koishikawa Kōrakuen, how she didn't know then which parts of herself were real. She shook her head. "I don't have one with you. Not anymore."

"Is that the truth?"

"Yes."

Santana's eyes took her measure. She rested her hand on Britt's arm. "Thanks," she said.

"For what?"

"For bringing me here. For being honest."

Britt looked down at the universe in her hands, a small artifact filled with big ideas, its words close to her skin but far from her understanding.

Santana took the book from her. "If I buy this, will you read it?"

"I'll try."

.x.

The antique shop was filled with an eclectic variety of objects: tansu chests made before the war, piles of pop magazines from the sixties and seventies, and a random collection of manga figurines still in their cellophane wrappers. Britt was wandering the haphazard aisles, one eye on Santana, the other watching out for items underfoot, when she saw the kogai kanzashi in a glass display case and stopped mid-step.

It was a hairpin, made of wood covered with matte black lacquer, its two parts resting on dark velvet in a bamboo box. The sword-like shaft tapered to a sharp point, its handle and matching cap intricately inlaid with mother of pearl in the shape of cherry blossoms. To make such a thing required weeks of effort, in the shaping of the wood and the coating of the lacquer, and then the painstaking work of the inlay itself, where one slip of the blade would ruin the entire piece.

It was the product of a patient and steady hand, and it was beautiful, and when she looked at it she thought of Santana.

She glanced around the shop, hoping to find Santana absorbed in something deeply enough to give her an opportunity to make a purchase. But Santana was already edging toward the door, and Britt gave the display case a last look of regret before following her to the front of the store.

They were halfway up the block when she spotted the sign in the plain glass door of an unremarkable looking storefront: "Bondi Books, First Editions in Photography, Art and Literature."

She couldn't have found a better distraction, for as soon as they entered, Santana discovered ten things to look at and twenty things she had to have, and once she struck up a conversation with the proprietor that immediately led him to begin pulling books down from the shelves, Britt knew she had her chance.

They were still talking when she returned, her secret purchase wedged in her back pocket and hidden under her shirt.

"You wouldn't happen to have four million Yen, would you?" Santana said with a grin. "Because that's how much this first edition signed by Oscar Wilde would cost me."

Britt did, many times over, in offshore bank accounts in countries that didn't care how bloodstained it was. But Santana was joking, and Britt played along, patting at her pockets and coming up empty. "I left it in my other pair of pants."

"Guess I'll have to start saving, then." She turned and gave the shopkeeper an apologetic look. "Someday..."

They said their goodbyes and stepped out of the store and into the street.

Britt eyed Santana in mock seriousness. "You might have to get a second job."

"You mean a third job, on top of teaching and writing? I don't like that idea. I'd rather write a novel about vampire garden slugs."

"I would read it."

"You would, huh? Even if it was terrible?"

"I wouldn't know until I read it."

Santana laughed and reached for Britt's arm, linking it in her own as they wandered up the sidewalk. "Can I interest you in a career in literary criticism?"

Anything sounded better than what she did now. Anything. Scrubbing toilets, mopping floors. But it would only be worth it if meant she had Santana, and the price for that was too high, the risk too great, and though she had a feeling that, if asked, Santana would say the same thing she'd said before, that she didn't care about the danger, it would show she didn't understand that she was a surgeon holding a scalpel, and when the blade grows dull you don't call for another surgeon, you throw the blade out and get a new one. Santana was too important to risk for long.

She clung to Santana's arm, clung to the time as it spooled away, faster and faster, every moment important, every moment a memory.

.x.

Early Friday morning, they sat in the first class car of a Tōkaidō Main Line train bound for Hiratsuka, on the coast of the Pacific.

Britt pulled a significant number of strings to make the arrangements on such short notice, but with the correct amount of politeness and the application of enough money, they could visit one of the major summer festivals, train tickets in hand, hotel reservations booked, their travel plans slipping neatly among the thousands already on the way.

Santana stretched muscles that weren't fully recovered from their early wake-up call and sprawled in her seat. Filled it to the brim. She looked out the window. "It's greener than I expected."

"In the spring, these hills are covered with cherry blossoms."

"Do they bloom and fade in a day?"

Britt smiled. "Over a few weeks. But they're fragile. Sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate. The winds blow. Or it rains, scattering the blossoms."

"Is that what the cherry blossom festivals are about? Seeing the flowers before they fade?"

"That, and appreciating life, however short it may be."

Santana turned and looked at Britt, and when she finally spoke, her voice was quiet. "Footprints on new snow." Weight breaking through the crust of icy flakes, the metallic-sounding crunch, the soft sinking through layers of accumulation. No going back to the way it had been before.

Santana pulled Britt's hand over the armrest so their fingers were linked. "My warrior poet."

Britt blinked, suddenly shy.

Santana laughed, the sound low and round with fondness, and rested her head on Britt's shoulder.

"So tell me about Tanabata. You called it a star festival?" Santana throwing her a life preserver.

"Yes. It celebrates the meeting of two deities beside the river of stars."

"I sense a story there."

"There is." And Santana wouldn't rest until she told it. "It begins with the sky, and all the Universe, and Orihime, the daughter of Tentei, the Emperor of the Heavens..." she said, and slipped into the telling.

Orihime spent her days at her loom next to the heavenly river, weaving beautiful cloth for all the gods and goddesses who lived among the stars, and she was beloved by all, but none moreso than her father, who took pride in his daughter's marvelous talents. But as the days and nights passed, Orihime began to fade, and sadness lived close to her like a veil of mist.

Tentei, noticing the change in his daughter's brightness, asked her what it was that troubled her. And Orihime said, "I spend all my waking moments at my loom, and I fear I will never know love."

The Emperor summoned Hikoboshi the cow herder, who tended his herd on the far side of the heavenly river. Hikoboshi was strong, and brave, and his cows were fat and well cared for. And when he stepped upon the eastern shore, Orihime blushed with excitement, for in Hikoboshi she had finally found the love she had longed for.

Orihime and Hikoboshi were soon married, and such was the spell of their love that they spent every moment wandering the heavens together. But as the days and nights turned upon the great wheel, there was no more cloth for the gods and goddesses, and cows ran freely across the land, trampling the grass and flowers. The deities of heaven cried out to the Emperor, and when Tentei saw the damage that had been done, he grew dark with anger. He banished Hikoboshi to the far side of the river and forbid the lovers from meeting again.

Orihime returned to her loom, but the cloth she wove was dull and lifeless and wet with her tears. She faded and became so pale that the heavens whispered of her sorrows.

Tentei's heart softened, and he called for Orihime and declared that if she wove to the best of her abilities, he would allow her to meet with Hikoboshi on the seventh day of the seventh month. Hope entered Orihime's heart, and she wove as never before. And on the assigned day, she stood beside the river and waited for the boatman of the moon.

But it had rained that day, and the river was swift and treacherous, and the boatman would not come. Orihime began to cry, and the sound of her tears echoed across the heavens, until a great flock of magpies heard her grief, and flew to her, and they linked their wings together and built a bridge to the far shore.

From then on, the two lovers worked hard throughout the year so that they might come together across the river of stars on the seventh day of the seventh month.

"And they hope it doesn't rain," Santana said.

Britt watched the squares of sunlight that projected through the windows. "Their chances of a smooth journey are looking good this year."

"Today's the seventh, isn't it. I lost track of time."

"It is. And if we remain on schedule we'll arrive in time for the parade."

At Ofuna Station, the line turned to the west, along the edge of Sagami Bay. Securing seats on the left side of the train had cost an additional round of string-pulling, but the payoff was the way Santana's eyes lit up as the coastline revealed itself, jeweled blue against a strip of dark sand.

"Wow. It's not what I expected." She rubbed her thumb absently against Britt's knuckle. "It reminds me of home, actually. But with better transit."

They were less than half an hour from Hiratsuka Station. Britt reached down and pulled her backpack out from under the seat in front of her. She unzipped it and retrieved a flat bamboo box. "I wanted you to have this."

Santana took the box with both hands and opened the lid. She drew in a breath. Sunlight splashed against mother of pearl, splashed into her eyes. She ran a fingertip over the handle, tracing the cherry blossoms. She looked at Britt and then back at the box and said, "Britt, it's gorgeous."

"It's a kogai kanzashi. A 'sword' hairpin. The cap is for the end, like a sheath."

She lifted it from the box. A delicate blade in delicate fingers. "Britt, I don't know what to say other than thank you."

Britt smiled, at Santana's pleasure, at her own pleasure she felt from the giving.

Santana set the pin back into its recessed slot and closed the box, and then she leaned over the armrest and kissed Britt softly on the lips. "Thank you."

They sat in silence the rest of the way, holding hands, even as the train lurched with the tension of deceleration and the other passengers began to stir and gather their belongings. Only when the car was nearly empty did they pick up their bags, and the quirk of fate and symmetry that matched them with opposite handedness also meant that they could do it all with their fingers linked together.

The train platform was packed with festival-goers, close as a school of fish, everyone moving in the same direction, to the north. They followed the flow without much of a choice; trying to cut through would have resulted in frustration and little to show for it.

"Not much chance of flowing though this one," Santana said.

"There's a bottleneck up ahead." Britt nodded to the glass doors of the station's entrance. She disliked being exposed like this, surrounded by people on all sides with no clear routes of movement or escape. The muscles corded in her neck, and blood pounded at her temples. She stood very close to Santana.

They finally squeezed through the doors onto the sidewalk outside. The festival swirled around them, already in high gear. Brightly colored decorations hung from every available surface — streetlights, trees, lines strung between buildings and electrical poles — paper and cellophane streamers that waved in the heat-fueled breeze that rose from the crowd and from the pavement.

There were no taxis at the taxi stand outside the station, their drivers having long given up attempting to pass through the festival crowds, but there were a few courier scooters, and Britt walked up to one of the riders and struck up a conversation, which concluded when he popped open the trunk mounted on the back of the bike and gestured into the waiting space.

"He'll take our bags to the hotel," Britt explained as she tossed her pack inside. "Check in isn't until three, so I thought we could explore the festival and catch a taxi later."

Britt paid the courier, and then they were free to enjoy the festival. They walked up the street, which was lined with vendors: food carts, and stalls selling drinks and souvenirs, and small booths with carnival games like goldfish scooping, pop-gun shooting, and ring toss.

Santana stopped in the shade of a tree and drank in the sights and sounds around her. Britt had seen this from her before, this state of observation, of watching closely and filing away every detail, sometimes as short as a moment and sometimes for minutes at a stretch.

Britt watched a group of children clustered around the goldfish booth as they dipped tissue paper nets into the water and shouted excitedly with every successful catch. A little one stood sniffling off to the side, her net broken, pushed out of the way by the older children.

Britt knelt beside her and handed the attendant the fee, taking a new net in return. She held it out to the little one. "Will you help me?"

The girl looked at Britt with wide eyes, at Britt's blonde hair and blue eyes and foreign features, but then she nodded bravely and took the net, her fist tiny in Britt's palm. The other children had done her a favor by pushing her aside, as the pool was calmer here than on the far side, where the others splashed and churned up the water. Britt held the net beneath the surface, calm and steady, because the game was less about _trying_ to catch the fish and more about being gentle, and in short order the girl's collection cup teemed with captive goldfish.

The little one watched the fish swimming within the cup, and then she suddenly upended it back into the pool. "They should be free."

The other children laughed, and Britt heard "baka" — stupid — mixed in among their jeers. The girl looked at Britt uncertainly.

Britt bent down and whispered in her ear, and then touched a finger to the tip of her nose. She smiled shyly, then pressed her tiny palm against Britt's cheek before spinning around and running away.

Britt stood up and tossed the spent net into the recycling bucket, and turned to find Santana standing close by.

"What did you say to her?"

"I told her she was a friend of the fish, and that they would not forget her kindness."

"She won't forget yours."

Britt shrugged.

"No. Come here." She grabbed Britt's shirt and pulled her close, into a hug so complete it squeezed everyone out of the world except Santana. "These little things you do, they come from a place of good." Her voice rumbled through Britt's chest. "No matter what happens to us, I want you to know that."

Britt couldn't remember the last time she had cried, and the prickles at the corners of her eyes and the stone-shaped lump lodged in her chest were sensations both familiar and not. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of Santana's hair, breathed in the sunlight, and squeezed Santana in her arms until her ribs ached.

When they finally separated, Santana held her at arm's length and said, "Only a good person could hug like that," and Britt discovered that it was indeed possible to laugh and cry at the same time.

.x.

They watched the procession travel down the main street, led by a marching band from a nearby university. They stuffed themselves with street food and fizzy drinks in strange hues and flavors until they were queasy. They let a shopkeeper persuade them to write wishes on tanzaku, brightly colored strips of paper, and tie them to the large bamboo outside her shop.

Britt considered her wish for a long time before writing it down, and when Santana asked her what it was, she smiled and said, "If I tell you, it won't come true."

At three o'clock, they took a break from the festivities and caught a taxi to their hotel. The room was furnished in the western style and looked out over the ocean. As Santana napped inside, Britt watched the waves and the setting sun from the deck, thinking of cherry blossoms, and wishes, and how Santana had managed to find some good inside her after all.

They returned after the sun set, when the festival truly came to life as the sidewalk lanterns and decorations above the street were lit to greet the heavens and the river of stars.

Santana looked up at the massive decorations over their heads. "Who makes all of these?"

"Regular people. Some live in the city and others travel here. They rent those mounting poles you see along the street."

"And they do it just for fun?"

"For fun, yes. But the festival also awards prizes for the best decorations."

They found the grand prize winner later on, surrounded by an appreciative crowd. The winning display was a depiction of a motorcycle race in miniature, complete with mechanized bikes circling the track, so detailed that the riders dragged their knees around every corner.

The man who built it stood in the center of the crowd, weeping, telling his story between sodden breaths, and Britt translated as best she could. He had worked on the assembly line at Suzuki's Hamamatsu plant for years, building motorcycle engines to support his family — and the budding racing career of his youngest son. But his son had died doing the thing that he loved most, killed in a crash during a race, and so his father decided to build a display in his honor, spending years on the carvings, and on the mechanical mechanisms that drove the automatons, and how the parts kept failing and how he had redesigned and redesigned until he'd gotten it right. Years of effort, all in tribute to his long-dead son.

"He worked on this for ten years?"

"Revising the design, yes."

"That's some dedication. I wonder if he ever thought about giving up."

"If you fall down seven times, you must get up eight."

Santana stopped in her tracks. "What did you say?"

Britt shook her head dismissively. "Just a saying. It's nothing."

"Say it again."

"If you fall down seven times, you must get up eight. _Nanakorobi yaoki_."

Santana stared at Britt for a very long time, her expression as opaque as black glass.

Britt squirmed under the intensity of her scrutiny. She replayed the last few moments in her head, searching for triggers that could have caused offense but finding none. "Did I say something wrong?"

Only then did Santana's look soften into one of awe and surprise. Her eyes glimmered on the edge of tears. "No, you didn't say anything wrong," she said, taking Britt's hand in both of her own. "What you said was perfect."

"I don't un—" she began, and the rest was lost because Santana pulled Britt's hand against her cheek, holding it there as she stood with her eyes closed. Britt reached up with her free hand and traced the line of Santana's brow, across her cheekbone and down the line of her jaw. Neither of them cared that they were in the middle of a crowd.

When Santana opened her eyes again, they were molten with currents deeper than Britt had ever seen, and she took Britt's hand and led her through the thinning crowds under strings of paper lanterns and waving strips of tanzaku, to an out-of-the-way nook formed by the entrance to some storefront, and then Santana was pressing her back against the glass with a kiss that began gently, like smoke through tinder, but quickly grew with urgency. Santana's fingers tangled in her shirt, and Britt pressed her palm to Santana's back, feeling long muscles slide beneath her skin. Britt was alight, the lanterns and the stars in the sky were alight, and Santana stood at the center of the flames.

Santana abruptly broke off the kiss and stepped back, pulling Britt by the shirt. "Hotel." It came out as a gasp.

They stumbled out on to the sidewalk, and Britt wrapped her arm around Santana's waist and guided her through the crowd to the festival's edges.

"Where's our flock of magpies?" Santana muttered.

"Will a taxi do?" Britt said, and somehow she found one, and somehow she managed to tell the driver the right address, and somehow they managed to sit still as their thighs brushed together. She paid the driver, and then Santana's fingers were wrapped around her arm, hard enough to bruise, as they took the elevator up to the room and opened the door.

Santana worked the dimmer switch that controlled one of the lamps in the room so the light was just enough to see by, and then she guided Britt around the unfamiliar furniture until they stood facing each other next to the bed. And suddenly, Britt found herself unable to move, as the nervous terror that had lurked under the surface chose this moment to show itself.

But Santana was ready, almost as if she were waiting for it. She pressed Britt's hand over her chest. "Feel this?" Her heartbeat was bird-quick and thudded into Britt's palm. "I'm just as terrified as you are."

It was too much to even look at Santana so Britt took the coward's way out and looked at the floor instead before saying, "I want you." Her tongue felt like lead. "But I'm so afraid."

Santana placed her hands on Britt's shoulders and gently guided her down on the edge of the bed. Then she lifted Britt's chin. "Look at me," she said, and she stepped back and reached for the hem of her shirt and drew it up over her head. Her eyes were carbon-black, as if a fire had burned through them, and they captured Britt, never wavering, as she undid the top button of her jeans, and the zipper, and tugged the snug denim down over thighs and calves until she stood before Britt in nothing but her bra and panties and a puddle of fabric at her feet. In the lamplight, her skin was the rich caramel color of burnished katsura wood, and she was so fiercely beautiful that things that should have come to Britt automatically, like breathing, or thinking, no longer did.

"Beautiful," Britt breathed, and a tiny smile graced the corner of Santana's lips as she reached back and unclasped her bra and let the black lace fall away, as she hooked her fingers in the delicate gossamer that circled her hips and pulled down, as she revealed every part of herself with the same assuredness that had come to define her.

She bent down and kissed Britt gently on her cheek, the corner of her mouth, her lips, and then said, "Touch me," quietly and insistently, an invitation that made Britt at once grateful and afraid.

Britt reached out her arm and touched trembling fingers to the flat plane between Santana's collarbones, trailed them down the valley in between, flattened them to cup one of Santana's breasts, and she was surprised at the softness and the weight and how Santana closed her eyes and tilted her head back in reaction. She drew her hand up and felt the nipple harden under her palm, and Santana's quick intake of breath splashed heat deep within her belly.

The same heat was reflected in Santana's eyes. "Let me see you." And when Britt didn't move, paralyzed between wanting and not wanting, she said, "I want to see all of you." Santana ran her fingers along Britt's jawline, stroked the pad of her thumb gently against Britt's lips. "Please?"

Britt looked away, but her nerveless fingers fumbled for the edge of her shirt.

Santana's hands covered her own. "Let me," she said, and she gently lifted the shirt up, mindful of Britt's sore arm, pulled it free, threw it aside, and reached for the waistband of Britt's trousers. This was not like the times in Britt's past when stripping bare was a ruse, a show of weakness when in reality a weapon was being unsheathed and there was nothing vulnerable about her at all. But here, as the pile of clothing grew around her feet, she was weaker than she'd ever been, and now the scars that covered her outside and in would be revealed.

Santana rested her hand against Britt's chest and gently nudged her to the center of the bed, until she lay on her back. All she could see was Santana above her, radiant in the light, and when she heard her whisper, "Oh God," she closed her eyes against the fear in her heart and waited.

"Brittany," she heard Santana say before she kissed her, on her lips, in a trail along her jaw and down her neck and across her chest, and when Santana reached the first scar, a twisted pucker of skin between Britt's left shoulder and breast, she placed a ring of kisses around it, and then, with reverence, a kiss directly upon the shadowed patch of ruin, a kiss that punched a rivet straight through Britt's heart and stopped her from breathing.

"What—" Britt's voice cracked and she said no more. _What is this? What have you done to me?_

She looked up at Santana, whose hair draped around her like willow branches and whose eyes glimmered like festival lanterns in the wind. Santana, who said, "You're so beautiful," and when Britt shook her head, insisted, "You are," and kissed her. "You are," she said again, and again, between kisses and softly exploring fingertips, proving it with action as well as words.

And when they were breast to breast and belly to belly and Britt could feel Santana burning hot into her thigh, she stopped thinking and moved on instinct, moved with Santana until her skin flushed and every touch poured liquid metal inside her, filling her with waves of heat, and she heard herself saying, "Please," even though she didn't know what for.

Santana was the perfect blade, forged of layer after layer folded in on herself, tempered by time and experience, and she cut Britt in half, cut her open to her needs, cut right to her deepest secrets — that her heart wasn't meant to be alone, that she loved Santana even though she didn't deserve it. Santana's touch roiled her and lifted her, broke her and carried her, and she came with a cry of joy and sorrow, a cry of restoration, of balance, of all the years she'd wasted and all the years to come.

Later, they lay in a languid haze, their arms and legs in a knot as they drifted on the feeling of sharing the same skin and the same breath. Santana's eyes were closed, and her smile was one of happy contentment, a smile that was mirrored in Britt's own.

Santana stirred and adjusted the drape of her limbs across Britt's body. "Well?" she said, her voice like smoke after a fire.

Britt answered immediately. "Again," she said, and Santana laughed and did exactly that.

.x.

She lay awake as Santana slumbered in her arms, the taste of Santana's skin in her mouth, and as she thought of the paths that stretched in a tangle of possibilities before her, she began to plot another course.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Many thanks to rugrash for her linguistic assistance as I wrote this chapter.


End file.
